


a land of holidays

by zozo



Series: Here Comes the First Day [13]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Artificial Intelligence, Dysphoria, Gen, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 05, Reunions, Science Fiction, Technobabble, Transhumanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24526522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zozo/pseuds/zozo
Summary: None of Hordak’s current projects are weapons-related.We don’t always get a second chance, but we always have a choice.(Or: the season finale.)
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Catra & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra/Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra), Angella & Catra (She-Ra), Angella & Glimmer (She-Ra), Angella/Micah (She-Ra), Bow & Catra (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Scorpia (She-Ra), Catra/Glimmer (She-Ra), Entrapta & Hordak (She-Ra), Entrapta & Wrong Hordak (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), Glimmer & Micah (She-Ra), Hordak & Wrong Hordak (She-Ra)
Series: Here Comes the First Day [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755943
Comments: 250
Kudos: 407
Collections: the corners of today





	1. prologue: une histoire écorchée

**Author's Note:**

> > _You’ll build a land of holidays,  
>  far away from winter and minutiae  
>   
> Into the sea, pale and unashamed,  
> you will wade until the stillness covers you  
>   
> And you’ll belong forever  
> to the moon, and the stars,  
> and the faint creaking of cardboard and wires_ ([x](https://youtube.com/watch?v=McuJx36pg10))

It starts as a blissfully low-key night off for the Best Friends Squad.

Glimmer’s long since stopped sneaking around with Bow, and her relationship with Adora and Catra is slowly becoming known around the palace too, so they don’t have to politely avoid the guards anymore—which means they can have sleepovers in Glimmer’s room, the only one with a bed big enough for all four of them (and what feels like the exponential increase in the number of elbows and knees Catra has to avoid at night).

No one’s said it in so many words, but they’re all still feeling rattled after Catra’s close call with the dreadbalm shrub the other day. No one’s sure who suggested a sleepover in the first place, or how the unspoken assumption formed that they’d all sleep at Glimmer’s tonight—but here they are, in their comfiest pyjamas, drinking mugs of hot cocoa from a large carafe.

They’re sitting on cushions in the middle of Glimmer’s floor playing Waterfall, Adora and Bow on one side of the game board, Glimmer and Catra on the other. But since Catra and Adora didn’t grow up playing Waterfall (unlike _some_ people), they’re mainly pawns in a Bow vs. Glimmer proxy war, the orange and blue sections of the board constantly shifting as the game continues.

Bow leans close to Adora’s ear and starts whispering something, occasionally nodding towards the board with a jerk of his head.

“You can’t just tell her what moves to play!” Glimmer groans for the sixth or seventh time.

“Oh, he’s—he’s totally not,” Adora says with a super-fake-sounding laugh. “We’re, uh, we’re talking about how hot you two look in those outfits.” Glimmer and Catra give each other a quick up-and-down look: they’re both wearing oversized t-shirts and baggy sweatpants. Adora winks at them with a cheesy grin.

It would be kind of embarrassing if it weren’t so cute.

“Just play your turn already, you dork,” says Catra, but she can’t hide a fond smile. “Sparkles and I want to see what kind of _brilliant_ strategic manoeuvre you came up with _all_ by yourself.”

Bow rolls his eyes in a theatrical display of pained offence, and Adora sticks her tongue out. “Fine. Take _this_.”

She sets a bluish-green token between two of Bow’s greenish-blue pieces and one of Catra’s orangeish-red ones, and the colours on the board reconfigure again. There’s a lot more blue than before, advancing on the orange from multiple directions.

Catra swears under her breath, but Glimmer gives her a supportive elbow nudge and places a reddish-orange piece of her own. The board returns to a roughly even orange/blue split.

“Nice _defensive_ move,” Bow sing-songs. Even his trash talk involves a lot of positivity, Catra’s noticed. “But you’re only delaying the inevitable.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” Glimmer scoffs, and she looks down at Bow’s mouth pointedly, then makes eye contact with him again and briefly licks her lips. Whatever he was about to say comes out as a barely-linguistic jumble of sounds. Glimmer just smiles sweetly at her flustered boyfriend, fluttering her eyelashes a little.

Adora gives Catra a wide-eyed look that says, _Have you been teaching her how to flirt?!_

Catra smiles back smugly. _Happy to teach you too_ , says the unmistakable tilt of her eyebrows. Unmistakable to Adora at least, who harrumphs and looks away, tips of her ears turning red.

Meanwhile, Bow gets enough of his composure back to make a decisive move that leaves orange surrounded by blue on nearly every side. But Catra—without any help from Glimmer at all, _Adora_ —has spotted a gap between Bow’s expert placement and Adora’s less sophisticated coverage and fills it with an orangeish-red token of her own.

“You—wait, wh—but—I thought I—oh _no_.” Bow goes through the five stages of grief in about three seconds as the board turns orange from corner to corner. Glimmer, meanwhile, is practically levitating with triumphant energy, and when Catra turns to her with a softly expectant smile—like she hopes she’s earned Glimmer’s approval—what she gets is Glimmer’s hands in her hair and an enthusiastic kiss on the mouth, with plenty of tongue.

On the other side of the board, Adora is giving Bow a consolation hug, patting him on the back. “It’s okay, buddy,” she says, “we’ll get ’em next time.”

Bow mumbles something that might be, “Next time I want to play on Catra’s team,” but Adora’s not sure enough to call him out on it.

They’re just about to clear the pieces off the board for a rematch when Glimmer’s communications pad starts beeping. She keeps it with her all the time—it’s only for urgent business, but as she’s the de jure ruler of an entire kingdom and the de facto head of the Princess Alliance, when the business is urgent, it’s _really_ urgent.

Glimmer picks up the pad and checks the screen. “It’s Entrapta. Why in the world would Entrapta be calling so late?” She’s met with a chorus of shrugs, so she shrugs herself and answers it.

“—limmer? Glimmer? Are you there? Good! Now… don’t freak out, okay?”

“Uh… why would I freak out, Entrapta? What’s going on?” There’s an indistinct rumble from off-screen: Hordak’s voice, but Glimmer can’t make out what he’s saying. Entrapta seems to be dismissing him with a flap of one of her pigtails.

“I need to tell you something, and—yes, Hordak, I’m telling her right now!—and time is _very much_ of the essence. Can you teleport here, to the New Scorpion Kingdom? We’re in my—in our lab.”

“What, right now?”

“If you ca-an,” Entrapta says, unable to disguise the tremor of excitement in her voice. “There’s something I need to tell you, and it would be best to tell you in person. And, again, we _really_ don’t have much time.”

“I—okay? I’m with Catra and Adora and Bow right now, should—”

“That’s fine! Bring them! But you need to bring them as soon as you can, okay?”

“Entrapta! Tell me!” Glimmer grips the pad tightly. “ _What is going on?_ ”

This time Hordak, though still unseen, comes through the comm pad’s little speaker loud and clear: “If it will get her here, just _tell_ her! We’re wasting time!”

Entrapta sighs and closes her eyes for a second. “Right. Okay. Glimmer… it’s about Queen Angella.”

Everything goes horribly silent except for the faint buzz from the open channel.

“M-my—my mom? What _about_ my mom?”

“We…” Still trying to keep her cool, Entrapta swallows what was probably going to be a squeal of joy. “We found her.”

Glimmer gasps—just barely, just a tiny sip of breath.

“And if we hurry,” Entrapta continues, “we’re pretty sure we can get her back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said this idea was too big for me to tackle, both emotionally and logistically? 🤡 Updates may be slower than my usual breakneck pace because I actually gave this one a "plot," and it turns out that involves a lot of "effort." (Not sure I'm using those words right, but I'll figure it out.) Obligatory link to [my Tumblr](https://emilythesphericalrobot.tumblr.com/). Stay tuned.


	2. an era of pure sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to be clear that Hordak in this fic is not intended to represent the lived experience of any real-life group of human beings. He’s an alien clone; this is a chapter about, among other things, his alien clone problems.
> 
> But you should know that I drew from my own experience with dysphoria—the regular human kind—to create his alien clone problems, and it gets a little heavy both here and in Chapter 3. If that’s something personal for you too, please take care of yourself and read (or skip) responsibly.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Continuity note: This chapter references my fic “[in the hearts of kings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24218530)”, which I suppose is now the unofficial prologue to _Here Comes the First Day_.
> 
> * * *
>
>> _I often dream_ / _I am etched into skin_  
>  _And my ornate roots_ / _have no home to return to_  
>  _And I am now but a_ / _misnamed common face_  
>  _And history is useless vapour, but it_ / _sits just so upon the page_ ([x](https://youtube.com/watch?v=8goHT_9MIZ8))

**40 hours earlier**

Hordak wakes.

It is still an unsettling experience, to wake. Clones of Horde Prime entered amniotic stasis pods when necessary, retaining as much awareness as needed throughout whatever regeneration process was required. They did not… sleep. Even in exile, Hordak had found other ways to restore his vigour and heal his body than simply leaving it inert, useless and vulnerable, for hours on end.

But he is no longer a servant of Horde Prime. And he is no longer a warlord bent on conquest. And if he is to survive in this new world, among these people he once sought to subjugate, then he must adopt at least some of their customs. It is an inefficient process, sleep, but it is not disagreeable—except for that moment of transition between unconsciousness and consciousness—and it serves well enough to rejuvenate him from day to day. And while it is not directly related to sleep itself, he has discovered an unexpected benefit to this change in his daily routine.

As the scope of his duties in the construction and re-construction of the New Scorpion Kingdom increases, Hordak spends more and more of each day around… people. ( _Other_ people, Entrapta would want him to say. As though they were his fellows, as though he had ever treated them as fellows—as though they would ever, now, treat him as one of theirs.) People—other people—sleep too, though the precise timing seems to vary from person to person—and yet they treat each other’s sleep times, whatever those may be, as sacrosanct. Everything seems to be scheduled around the sleep schedules of all parties involved.

Efficiency is important, Entrapta had told him, but not the only important thing. It seems a certain collective level of mutual concern exists among—among _other people_ , accommodating each other’s differing needs even at the cost of avoidable delays and the expenditure of additional resources. And this concern has even been extended to him—no one has ever interrupted Hordak during his sleep hours.

There is much for him to learn, yet, and more still for him to understand.

After the final battle, they’d barely spent enough time in Dryl to get settled before they were back in the New Scorpion Kingdom, helping with the reconstruction. Entrapta had promised him a lab of his own in Dryl, but as they were spending most of their time here, they’d set themselves up in what had been Hordak and Entrapta’s old lab there.

He’s been given an old Force Captain bunk for now. It does not escape his notice that the rest of this barracks wing is almost entirely unused. He wonders briefly which came first: the empty halls or their pariah tenant. It is no matter, he decides. The solitude suits him fine.

Hordak even has a small wardrobe now, clothes that aren’t just ornamentation for armour. Entrapta had procured for him two long, plain black dresses—she hadn’t said from where, but they fit him suitably—and a few sets of utilitarian coveralls for working. He washes in the small sink, then puts on the coveralls for today, and uses the small mirror just long enough to re-apply his eye makeup—another mysteriously-sourced gift from Entrapta.

The makeup helps him feel slightly more like himself, as does the fresh dark blue dye in his hair, but it doesn’t do anything about the eyes that drive him away from his own reflection every time. Entrapta’s working on a gene shedder that will turn them red again, but she needs to salvage more parts from Prime’s ship—or rather, from the tree which had consumed it—to do so safely.

Hordak can wait. He has time, now, thanks to She-Ra’s mercy—that most mysterious gift of all—and if it bothers him excessively to see Horde Prime’s eyes staring back at him from the mirror, all he has to do is remind himself that Prime is gone, erased by the true power of She-Ra. Not for his sake, of course—Hordak suspects he was a case of “collateral repair” that She-Ra had simply been unwilling to correct—but it still feels like a gift.

If only he knew what he was supposed to do with it.

Part of him seems to wish his morning routine were longer, because he stands at the door of his bunk for a long moment, feeling as though there is something more to do before he leaves for Entrapta’s— _their_ workshop. But of course there is not.

A surprising amount of the wreckage of the lab had been salvageable—including a great deal of the portal equipment, to everyone’s discomfort, even Hordak’s—everyone except Entrapta. She insisted that, now Etheria was back in the universe and its magic was free of First Ones encumbrance, that there was no further risk to continuing portal experiments. Everyone else, including Hordak this time, wasn’t so sure.

For Hordak’s part, he’s been developing several projects—none of which, he has repeatedly assured Scorpia, are weapons—including an AI matrix: an empty quantum transenna that could, if he’s designed it correctly, hold a living brain pattern. He doesn’t have a spare brain pattern for it to hold, and he suspects experiments in that arena would be frowned upon from the Princess Alliance’s ethical perspective—but that’s not really the point.

It’s productive work. He’s creating something that hasn’t existed before, adapting old technology with new. Even Horde Prime never mastered the delicate quantum latticework required for such a matrix. All of Prime’s consciousness manipulation required living brains; this is life from pure technology. The only way you could kill someone with it is by dropping it on their head with unusually good aim.

If it comes to fruition, it will be a slap in the face of Prime’s memory. That alone would be enough.

He meets Force Cap—no, _Queen_ Scorpia in the hallway, and she calls his name, typically cheerful. If it weren’t for her size and her distinctive claws, Hordak might not have recognized her: gone is the utilitarian Horde uniform, replaced by almost shockingly casual attire, a plain sleeveless top, and a long, floral-patterned skirt. It seems incongruous for royalty—but, he supposes, this is the _New_ Scorpion Kingdom. If her hair is longer than Horde regulation would allow, that no longer matters to anyone. Not even him.

She grins as he approaches, wider than anyone ever smiles at him except Entrapta and—his brother, the one they address with that infuriating name.

“Oh, your hair looks terrific!” Queen Scorpia says. “That blue came out so nice.”

He nods, trying for something more courteous than curt. She had given him the dye the previous day—at, he suspects, the request of Entrapta. He cannot imagine that Scorpia would have reason to care about his appearance, especially an aspect with such… personal connotations for him. But there was no question she had provided the dye, and it had functioned perfectly. “Thank you, Queen Scorpia. I appreciated your gift. As you can see, I… have made use of it.”

“You sure did!” She’s still smiling. It perplexes him. Entrapta has explained much about Etherian facial expressions, and he’s beginning to feel he has a grasp on the basics, but he cannot always decipher the reason behind the emotion, even if he can identify the emotion itself. He understands, more or less, what factors might cause Scorpia to smile—but he cannot understand why those factors would arise in _his_ presence.

Yet another mystery.

“I was… planning to visit Entrapta’s workshop,” he says tentatively. “You do not normally seek me out near my quarters. Do you require assistance?”

“Oh! Yeah, actually. Some of the outlying farms have rigged up infrastructure for a basic irrigation system, and Entrapta—maybe she already told you—designed this pumping and filtration hub that hooks into it, but she said she probably won’t have time today to do the install herself. She said she thought you could probably handle the last few steps?”

Hordak was indeed aware of this project. His knowledge of it is not comprehensive, but it should be simple enough to review Entrapta’s schematics. “She is correct. Accomp—hm. Excuse me. _If_ you accompany me to her workshop, I will collect the data and equipment I need, and you can continue to… brief me… on the farms.”

The scorpion queen smiles her illogical smile again. “Will do. Lead the way!”

* * *

The installation of the irrigation hub is not a complex process, not compared to—for example—a particle cannon lightweight enough to be wearable. It is, however, time-consuming, and in the hours it takes Hordak to complete and check all the distribution connections, an unforeseen problem develops.

Reformed clones are an increasingly common sight around Etheria. Entrapta and… his brother… have established a bare-bones rehabilitation facility on the border between the New Scorpion Kingdom and the Whispering Woods. Many of the clones left on Etheria died with Prime, the ones so closely linked to the hive mind that they couldn’t breathe or circulate blood without him. Some of them went mad from the sudden loss of connection and now require constant care; others were “merely” traumatized, and face various prognoses for recovery. And a few of the luckiest among them have begun to integrate into society, mostly as skilled labourers. He is certainly not the first freed clone to appear at a settlement bearing documents from a princess, sent to complete a mechanical task such as this.

But as his work progresses, more and more Etherians gather—at a safe distance, but well within his sphere of awareness—to watch. At some point Hordak realizes that none of the other former clones have dark blue hair like his, none of the others wear black eye makeup like he does. He considers that he may as well have painted a target on himself, and for what—the sake of his own comfort? Trivial aesthetic preferences? What a fool. He deserves whatever these farmers are going to do to him.

But they do nothing, except watch. He knows they’re talking quietly amongst themselves, but he cannot hear them, and he does not care to. He works through the afternoon. Each time he takes a break to stretch his muscles and hydrate himself, there’s a shift in the crowd of onlookers, an uncertain shuffle of feet, but no one tries to meet his gaze, and after a while, Hordak no longer tries to meet theirs.

He finds it deeply unsettling. Open hostility would be one thing—unpleasant, problematic, difficult to resolve cleanly, but at least comprehensible to him—and apathy another, likewise understandable, response. But this… this wary, neutral _attention_ …

When he finishes securing the last pipe, checks the pressure levels, and activates the irrigation hub, there’s a murmur from the spectators that’s loud enough for Hordak to hear, even if the content remains indistinct. As he packs up his tools, the crowd slowly disperses. By the time he’s ready to leave, they’re gone.

* * *

Nothing happens to Hordak on his way back to the barracks. No one approaches or speaks to him. He stops in his bunk to wash up and change into one of his black dresses, and then goes to return Entrapta’s tools to her lab.

He finds her deep in conversation with his brother, both of them so intent that Hordak’s reluctant to interrupt. He goes straight to replacing the tools in their various storage cabinets, neither attempting to overhear nor avoiding listening to their conversation.

“I—oh, I feel bad,” Entrapta says sadly. “That’s—that’s a really big issue. It’s messy and… and complicated, for a lot of people, even people who aren’t—people who usually have an easier time with things like this. People who aren’t me. And I just… I wish I could, but I don’t think I’m qualified to help. I definitely can’t tell you what’s _normal_ , and I feel like that’s probably an important part of this stuff.”

There’s a brief pause before his brother speaks. “I believe I understand. And I believe—you are demonstrating care for me, are you not? Care for my well-being? That you do not wish to harm me through your inexpertise.”

She stammers. “I—yeah, I guess I am? Yeah, that _is_ what I’m doing! And of _course_ I care about you, buddy.”

Hordak marvels once again at Entrapta’s capacity for—well, for _care_ , to care about him and this brother and his other, less fortunate brothers as well… it seems to be rare even among Etherians, this breadth of spirit. And yet Hordak is more aware than ever that many Etherians disdain Entrapta for what they perceive to be a _lack_ of care on her part. Their stubborn imperceptiveness, their willful abandonment of awareness, that anyone would interpret the quick, deep currents of Entrapta’s mind as _lacking_ anything but familiarity—it is infuriating to him in a way few things are anymore. But in this bizarre new world of constant mystery, it almost seems apropos.

He finishes stowing the last of the equipment and simply stands next to the cabinet, out of sight of where Entrapta is sitting, making no pretense not to be listening. Regardless, he’s quite sure they’re aware of his presence by now.

His brother continues speaking. “Is there someone I _could_ ask? Perhaps someone with extensive knowledge of what is, as you say, ‘normal’? Perhaps—oh! We could mathematically determine the most average person on all of Etheria and ask _them!_ ”

Entrapta giggles. “Well, if you want expertise…” Her good humour quickly fades into a sigh. “I don’t know if anyone’s an expert on you. _You_ might be the expert on you.”

“Then as expert,” proclaims his brother proudly, “I formally request that you perform the procedure.”

“Oh, Zed,” Entrapta says sadly. “It doesn’t work that way.”

 _Zed?_ Hordak reels with confusion. Is this not _that_ brother, the first freed from Horde Prime by Entrapta and her friends? The one they insist on calling… he can barely even bring himself to think it… “Wrong Hordak”?

Hordak peers around a stack of crates into the workshop’s small sitting area, just a folding table with a couple of chairs next to it. Indeed, there’s Entrapta and—Zed, now, apparently, his multi-coloured hair and even more multi-coloured clothes as distinguishing as Hordak’s own affectations. A sense of relief washes over Hordak as he realizes _that name_ will no longer be used, in his presence or elsewhere.

He supposes, too, that this is a significant step in his brother’s own development. The simplicity of the name even suggests Zed chose it himself, which Hordak can attest is a source of great inner strength. _Well done, brother,_ he thinks, though it does not occur to him to say it out loud.

But what are he and Entrapta discussing?

“I don’t have the parts for the gene shedder yet,” she tells him, “and it’s going to be a little while before I have the chance to salvage them, or teach someone else how to salvage them for me. So I can’t do it now and I might not be able to do it soon. And even then, it’s not just as simple as—as changing the colour of your eyes. We’re talking about growing a whole _system_ of internal organs, never mind the external ones, and then hormone receptors pretty much all throughout your body…”

A system of internal organs? With external elements? And it’s something for which clones lack the genetic sequence… something for which Zed, on his journey of self-discovery, would be impatient… And it involves hormones.

The hypothesis that forms in Hordak’s mind accounts for all his observations. He dearly wishes it hadn’t.

Whatever outcome he was trying to prevent by not announcing his presence will now only compound the longer he stays concealed. He steps out from behind the crates without ceremony and nods when they turn to notice him.

“Entrapta,” he says, nodding more deeply to her. The incline of his head is a data point he knows she tracks; he finds it a simplistic and non-specific means of non-verbal communication with her, though it is effective for certain limited uses.

“Zed,” he says with another, shallower nod, relishing the shock that appears on his brother’s face.

“Brother! You said my _naa-aame!_ ” Zed bursts into ecstatic tears and throws his arms around Hordak’s waist.

The proximity is neither appealing nor offensive to Hordak, though he now intends to take the first opportunity to return to his bunk and change into his other, less tear-stained dress. He notices Entrapta gently patting Zed on the back with one of her outstretched pigtails.

“Hi, Hordak!” she says as though he doesn’t have a rainbow-haired clone sobbing with joy into his chest. “How did the irrigation hookup go?”

He shrugs. The motion of his torso doesn’t seem to affect Zed at all. “Without incident. The hub is installed and irrigating the farms.”

“Ohh! That’s wonderful! I really appreciate you taking care of that for me. The farmers must have been so happy with you!”

Hordak remembers one of the first things he ever learned about Entrapta, after her technical aptitude and… eagerness to converse with him. It had not seemed relevant at the time, but now—after everything, somehow—it remains one of his clearest memories.

“It’s fine if you don’t like me,” she’d said, dodging yet another of his attempts to confiscate the tool she’d absconded with. “I’m used to that. We don’t have to like each other to work together.”

His hand was about to close on her wrist when her hair shot up into the rafters in two slender ropes and pulled her straight up, out of his reach. “I mean it! I worked with the princesses for _months_ and none of _them_ liked me. We can just… do science! It’s fine!”

It was her logic that had begun to convince him then, but revisiting the memory now…

Surely she had been mistaken. It was the princesses who had retrieved her from Beast Island, after all. He knows his understanding of what it means to “like” someone else is rudimentary, but surely it must encompass undertaking a dangerous rescue mission. And he knows she has had friendly interactions with many of the princesses since Prime’s defeat. So perhaps it was a mistake she has since corrected.

But she had believed it at the time, and—with the lessons Entrapta herself has since given him on deciphering facial expressions—he can see in his mind’s eye the involuntary contraction of her forehead muscles that suggests _pain_.

_The farmers must have been so happy with you._

He remembers the silent, watchful huddle as he worked.

“Indeed,” he says. “In fact, I was told to convey their gratitude to you. For the… magnitude of your work.”

Entrapta’s forehead only crinkles a little as she smiles—no pinch of pain at all. “Awww. Maybe they’ll be so grateful they’ll give us some of their tiniest vegetables!”

Mercifully, Zed ceases wetting the front of Hordak’s dress. He gives his brother one last squeeze and then releases him. Hordak takes a deep, relieved breath.

“I’ve heard of vegetables before. Brother Glimmer mentioned them. What are they? Are they a kind of table?”

Two large spots across Hordak’s chest—from Zed’s eyes, he realizes—are now wet enough to cling uncomfortably. Zed and Entrapta were talking about _sex_ when he arrived, and now they’re going to talk about _food_. Hordak did several hours of steady manual labour today. If he has interpreted Etherian customs correctly, he may be entitled to additional time for sleep.

He excuses himself, allows both Zed and Entrapta to embrace him, and returns to his quarters as briskly as possible. The movement of air across the damp fabric only increases his discomfort. He removes the dress as soon as the door closes to his bunk, laying it over the back of the only chair in the room. The laundry facilities are far enough from the barracks that he’ll take it there tomorrow.

Zed’s interest in sensory pleasure—sensory experience of all kinds—baffles Hordak. That this bafflement comes from one of his clone brothers, and not the general strangeness of Etherian society, only destabilizes him further. Hordak has been to the rehabilitation centre. He has seen clones feeding themselves, the ones who are able to feed themselves, and apparently enjoying the process. Certainly he knows Entrapta enjoys food, if it is appropriately miniature, and of course the other princesses do too. As does, presumably, everyone on Etheria but him.

Eating is just so _repulsive_. Moving food around with one’s tongue while masticating it to a slurry is possibly the worst way he could conceive to obtain nutrition. Fortunately, it had been trivial for he and Entrapta to create a machine which converted Horde food rations—of which there was still a plentiful supply—to a drinkable consistency, allowing him to at least get the business over with as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, there’s still all of that… swallowing. He shudders, then tries to calm himself. He won’t need to deal with another nutrient drink until the morning.

His last conscious thoughts of the day are memories of She-Ra, from the day of the final battle: Waking up to the peculiar soothing coolness of her hand on his cheek. A memory of a memory, holding a bright-eyed baby girl in his arms. She-Ra helping him gently to his feet. And then from [later](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24218530), She-Ra standing over him, terrible in her power, and the question she’d asked him: “What do _you_ want?”

 _I want to know,_ he thinks, _I want to know what I want._

And Hordak sleeps.


	3. a space that could shipwreck your heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _Je me rappelle que des détails,  
>  d’écouter de petites taches  
> des éclairs désombreillés.  
> Dans les cœurs, rien ne se cache._ ([x](https://youtube.com/watch?v=u9_Klbrfj7Q))

**The next day**

Hordak wakes too abruptly to reflect on the discomfort of waking: the intercom speaker on his wall is crackling. An interruption?

A voice comes through the intercom: “Hordak, are you there?” It’s Entrapta. He cannot be certain without cross-reference to her facial expressions and the physical positioning of her body, but she is speaking rapidly enough to suggest that she is agitated.

“I am,” he says, and then—rather redundantly—“I am here.” The digital readout on the wall says it’s only an hour before the time he usually rises. He will not suffer for the minor adjustment to his sleep.

“Good. I’m really sorry if I woke you but… I need you in the lab. Now? Yes, now. I need your help. I think… well, I don’t know, but I think I might have… _found_ something.”

Hordak completes his morning ablutions as quickly as possible and clothes himself in his clean dress before rushing as quickly as dignity will allow to the workshop. He finds Entrapta bent over a monitor scrolling with noncommutative hyperbolic coordinates and stress–energy tensor readings that suggest… negative mass?

Something to do with portals, then.

And it’s something urgent.

He feels a chill so reminiscent of his tear-dampened clothes from last night that he looks down to ensure he’s chosen the correct, clean dress. He has.

“Hordak!” Entrapta says, looking up from her work. “I’m so glad you’re here. I think I might be going crazy. Take a look at this.”

She pulls up a vast array of data—it appears to be measurements from one of the satellites she recently placed in orbit. Whatever she’s measuring, it’s in standard deviations from the cosmic background radiation—a lot of them, and increasing over time—approaching some kind of limit… what? When?

“I will need you to elaborate. There isn’t enough context here.”

“It’s—sorry, here’s the rest of it—so, okay, these are gauges of five-dimensional membrane interactions. With no portal activity in 1,000 years and then two major portal events so close together, I’ve been trying to see if there have been any long-term effects in our τ-local space-time.”

Hordak looks back at the data, and the additions. “Are these really effects of either portal? They appear to have emerged too recently.”

But Entrapta shakes her head. “It’s not emerging here. It’s _coming_ here. I think these readings are a shockwave that’s been expanding since—I’m not sure yet _which_ portal event—but it doesn’t really matter. The shockwave is collapsing back to its source.”

She pulls up another screen with a series of equations. Hordak’s 11-dimensional vector calculus is rusty, but Entrapta has organized the information effectively enough for him to follow her work, and her hypothesis is clear: the shockwave will arrive—or return, he supposes—within a day.

“What will happen?” he asks her, “and do we have time to prepare?”

She shakes her head again, more slowly this time. “It’s not like—if I weren’t watching these 5-branes, I’m not sure we’d have even noticed it happening. Maybe some aurora if it reached us at night, or increased neutrino activity if we were looking for that, but… it’s not something _bad_ that’s going to happen.”

When Entrapta starts speaking cryptically like this, Hordak has learned, it’s often a sign that she’s reluctant to share more specific information which may evoke an emotional reaction, in herself or others. Hordak suspects that if he places a hand on her shoulder, she will interpret it as an expression of intent to be considerate of her emotional state in this moment, as well as a voucher of his own emotional stability. When Entrapta leans into his touch and sighs, seeming to relax slightly, Hordak realizes he was correct.

“But _as_ the shockwave collapses,” she begins to explain, “and for a little while after, the quantum field around Etheria is going to—see the asymptote there?—exist in a paradoxical state. On a very local scale, for a very brief moment, the normal laws of entanglement won’t apply to the linear functions of portal mechanics—”

Hordak catches up and finishes her thought: “—allowing access to normally inaccessible manifolds of space-time.”

She nods. “Th-theoretically, yes.” Her eyebrows are drawn together with worry. He leaves his hand on her shoulder, just in case. “What do you think?” Entrapta asks him. “Am I just… seeing what I want to see, or…?”

Seeing only what one wants to see—Hordak has some experience with that. He shakes his head firmly. “No. Your analysis of the data is sound. In theory…”

“…we could bring back Queen Angella.”

The silence drags out. Hordak realizes Entrapta is waiting for his reaction.

What _is_ his reaction? Angella had been his enemy, the head of the rebellion opposing his conquest of Etheria—but Entrapta had also been his enemy, initially. So had Scorpia, by the end. So had everyone else. And now they are not. The war is over, and he lost. He does not feel any special antipathy for Angella, not anymore.

So he simply nods to signal his agreement. “In _theory_ ,” he cautions. “We would need to locate the correct manifold, and derive the precise vector to access it. The calculations required will be… formidable.”

Entrapta sighs. “We have to try. It was my portal technology that—I mean, I know Catra’s the one who—but if I hadn’t built it, she never could have—”

Her mounting distress is obvious even to him. He decides to take a risk and briefly, gently, tighten his grip on her shoulder for a moment. It is a logical punctuation mark in the restrictive syntax of physical communication, but he has never employed it before.

“We _have_ to try,” she sighs again.

“Then we must begin at once,” Hordak says.

First, Entrapta refines the satellite data to determine the exact moment the window to rescue Angella will open. The shockwave should converge on Etheria in approximately 16 hours. They will then have less than three minutes to open a portal, enter it—almost certainly only She-Ra can do that safely—and retrieve Angella before the shockwave dissipates, the portal evaporates, and the opportunity is lost forever.

“I’ll start generating the calculations,” Entrapta says. “I’m worried we won’t have enough time to actually run them.”

Hordak grunts. Worrying will not change the amount of time the calculations will take, but he knows Entrapta knows that. Instead he says, “I will begin the necessary modifications to the portal hardware. That will also take a significant amount of our remaining time.”

“If—I mean, we’re going to need She-Ra to go through the portal if we get it open, right? So we’re going to have to tell Adora about this. And Bow could help me with the calculations…”

He considers this. The boy is a gifted programmer, for an Etherian. And She-Ra will indeed be a critical part of the operation. But Hordak wonders if their emotional investment in the outcome will be more of a liability to working efficiently than an asset.

Unlikely, he decides. They had managed to control their emotions well enough to mount a sustained and pitched rebellion against him, after all; whatever outbursts might occur would have to be uncharacteristically disruptive to cancel out the gains from a second person working on the software.

“Then we should contact them,” he agrees, “but not until they can be of maximum assistance to us. We should prepare ourselves to optimize the efficacy of their help once they arrive. Where did you and Zed store the semantic memory cores you salvaged from Prime’s ship?”

* * *

**9 hours later**

The Best Friends Squad sit in stunned silence around Glimmer’s communications pad, all thoughts of another game of Waterfall, or raiding the kitchen for cookies, or an epic pillow fort and/or fight totally abandoned.

“My—my mom?” asks Glimmer, voice rising. “What _about_ my mom?”

“We found her,” Entrapta says, and Glimmer gasps. “And if we hurry, we’re pretty sure we can get her back.”

“What?!” “How?!” Adora and Bow exclaim simultaneously. Catra says nothing.

Finally Hordak appears on the little digital screen. “The window to do so is closing in seven hours and we require your assistance _now_. We will explain everything else when you arrive.” Then he cuts the signal. Glimmer exhales so hard it’s almost a cough.

“Is this for fucking real,” she says in a low voice.

“Good point,” Adora says warily as Bow scoots over to wrap Glimmer, who’s breathing like she just ran a mile, in his arms. “Could this be a trap?”

Catra grunts, perfectly still as she speaks except for her lips and the tip of her tail. “Doubt it. Not really Hordak’s style. And he’s way too scared of She-Ra.”

“So… this is for real,” Bow says, and it sinks in for a moment.

Adora rests her hands on the carpet. “Then we have to go. Right? Glimmer?”

Glimmer takes a deep gulp of breath, lets it out slowly, and nods. Her jaw muscles clench. “Yeah. We do. I think Catra’s right about Hordak. But if this _is_ some kind of trick… She-Ra won’t be the one he needs to be afraid of.”

Bow runs to his room for his own tracker pad, swearing he’ll be back within 30 seconds.

Glimmer continues her deep breathing exercise—a recent lesson from Perfuma via Catra, who’d claimed it had “totally kicked the ass of” an anxiety attack for her the other day—and Adora takes over hugging her while Bow’s gone. Catra doesn’t touch them, but stands close enough for moral support, still essentially motionless.

“Should… should we tell King Micah?” Adora asks, her voice quivering slightly. It’s unclear who she’s asking, but Glimmer shakes her head immediately.

“No. I don’t want to get his hopes up, just in case… We can tell him when we bring Mom home.”

“Okay!” says Bow, flinging himself back through the door at the 27-second mark, tracker pad in hand. “I’m ready. Come here.” He pulls all three of them into a big hug, with Glimmer right in the middle. He kisses her on the temple and leans his head against Catra’s for a moment, then Adora’s. “Let’s do this,” he says.

The four of them vanish in a sparkling cloud of magic.

* * *

After Entrapta and Hordak explain everything, the next few hours pass quickly. Bow and Entrapta type steadily at adjacent terminals, writing the code that will generate the complex equations they’ll need to solve to actually find and reach Angella. Hordak had set up enough of the hardware before they arrived that he can mostly direct Catra—and Scorpia, who’d poked her head in to say hi and insisted on staying to help—to assist him in completing the parts that require heavy lifting.

Off to the side, trying to stay out of everyone’s way, Glimmer is burrowed as deeply as she can into Adora’s arms. Adora nuzzles her gently. “How are you holding up?” she asks.

Glimmer shrugs and shakes her head, or maybe she’s just nuzzling Adora back. “With a white-knuckle grip, it feels like.” Her voice is shaky. “Just trying to get through the moment, you know?”

Adora nods. “The uncertainty. Heh,” she chuckles, “we’re all starting to sound a little like Perfuma, aren’t we.”

Glimmer doesn’t laugh, but Adora can feel her smile a little against her chest. “There are worse people to sound like.”

Across the room, Scorpia and Catra are helping Hordak with a cable that’s as big around as Catra’s waist. It’s not especially heavy, but it’s extremely cumbersome, and it takes all three of them working in coordination to route it through the lab without knocking anything over.

It’s weird in a nice way, Catra thinks, to be working side-by-side with Scorpia again. But working side-by-side with Hordak is weird in a _weird_ way. The stick up his ass is present and accounted for, but the rage that used to be just under the surface—deliberately, visibly simmering, a constant threat of imminent violence—is gone.

He’s definitely still Hordak, though, recognizably as stuffy and humourless as ever. He’s curt with Catra, even snippy a few times, but it feels more like blunt efficiency than hostility. And he’s… well, “friendly” definitely isn’t the right word, but he’s noticeably less blunt with Scorpia—in fact, he seems almost respectful of the scorpion queen.

Catra shakes her head as she watches Hordak secure the massive plug at the end of the cable into a massive socket on the wall. _Super_ fucking weird.

Scorpia has to leave for a while, but promises to return. Gradually the typing from Bow and Entrapta slows as they move from writing to debugging their code. Then there’s a hushed conversation between the two of them that lasts for a while. No one is willing to interrupt them, but everyone in the room notices.

The conversation seems to become an even more hushed argument, but one that resolves quickly, and then they turn away from each other to address the rest of the room. They don’t seem surprised to see everyone’s already watching them.

“We have a problem,” Bow starts. In Adora’s arms, Glimmer starts to tremble again.

Entrapta explains. “We finished our code and generated the calculations we’ll need to open the portal to Queen Angella. B-but… there are exponentially more calculations than I first thought, orders and orders of magnitude more, and…” She trails off, eyes downcast.

Bow swallows hard. “We don’t have time to run them all. Not on the hardware we have. Not before the shockwave gets here.”

A pall of silence falls over the room.

“Let me see that,” says Hordak suddenly, striding over to their terminals. Entrapta just points to the file size indicator. “Which of you wrote the spectral decomposition algorithm?” Bow raises his hand tentatively; when Hordak just nods sharply at him, Bow pulls up the relevant section of code. Hordak leans in and reads it quickly.

“Yes,” he says, but he doesn’t seem to be talking to Bow. “Yes. Good.”

“I, uh, I don’t get it,” says Bow.

“Your algorithm is suitable for a quantum processor,” Hordak explains in a rapid but neutral tone. “There are no iterative operations it could not execute in parallel. A properly recursive analytical AI could complete the calculations in time, before the window closes.”

Bow frowns at the console. “Wait. If you have a quantum AI, why haven’t we been using _that_?”

“We _don’t_ have a quantum computer,” Entrapta says. “ _Or_ an AI.”

“That is not correct,” says Hordak. “I have a complete, viable quantum transenna ready to support a neurographical payload.”

Entrapta’s mouth opens in a small “o”—surprise. “You finished it?” she says, the tone and timbre of her voice suddenly full of less identifiable emotions. “That’s amazing, Hordak!” He nods to acknowledge and move past the praise as quickly as possible. “But it would take days, weeks even, to grow an AI net with the kind of heuristics we’d need,” she finishes sadly.

“True,” Hordak says, “but we will not need to grow one from scratch.”

It only takes her a moment to follow, but she doesn’t get all the way there. “A… a scan? Hordak, we don’t have time to scan a brain either, that’ll take half a day or more!”

Instead of saying anything, he reaches over and opens a new screen on her terminal, a power flow diagram quickly forming on the screen as he issues a series of commands. As the schematic takes shape and its intent becomes clear, Entrapta’s eyes get bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

“No…” she whispers. “Hordak, wh—that’s a feedback loop through the gamma synchronizers—the holonomic receptors will—” She covers her mouth with her hand. “Hordak, you _can’t!_ ”

“Wh-what’s going on?” asks Scorpia, who’s just returned to the room.

Hordak is grateful for an excuse not to look at Entrapta. “We have the equipment to scan a brain—my brain—and produce a suitable AI pattern to marshal the calculations on quantum hardware in time. If we make minor adjustments to the power system, the scan will be… instant.”

“The scan will be _destructive_ ,” Entrapta says hollowly. “It will scan you by literally _taking you apart_.”

“Wait, what?!” interrupts Bow. Hordak ignores him.

“It will effectively transfer my consciousness and memories into the computer’s quantum lattice,” he says, as though he’s correcting what Entrapta said—but he’s not. The scan will indeed be completely destructive to his physical form. “My existence as an individual sentience will continue.”

Entrapta seems to be unable to stop shaking her head back and forth. “No. No, we can find another way. This is—this is stupid, you don’t have to—” But he reaches past her again and issues a final command on the diagram he created. Several metres away, a fabricator buzzes to life.

The brain scanner is barely more sophisticated than a prototype, just half a narrow booth covered in exposed electronics, but Hordak recalls that its construction is highly modular. The power coupling he just fabricated should swap in easily.

Near the terminals, Entrapta is still protesting loudly, heedless of Bow’s attempts to pacify her. Hordak wishes there were time for him to attempt comforting her again. There simply isn’t.

The power coupling swaps in easily. Hordak hits a switch on the wall and the booth sputters violently to life, spikes of yellow lightning snapping erratically in a jagged central column. It certainly looks like something that could vaporize him instantly.

“ _Stop!_ ” shrieks Entrapta. Whatever force had been holding her in place releases, and she runs towards him. “You can’t! We’ll—we’ll figure something else out!”

“The window closes in barely more than four hours,” he says simply. “We ran out of time to… figure something else out. This is the only path to success from here, Entrapta.” He starts to turn towards the scanner.

“Hordak, _wait!_ ” Entrapta tugs at his arm.

“I cannot. The scan will be instant, but the upload will take time, the calculations will take time, and _we do not have time!_ ”

“Well, why do you fucking _care?!_ ” Glimmer screams. It’s the first time she’s spoken in maybe an hour. Adora grips her tightly. “Are you seriously about to sacrifice yourself for my _mother_ , of all people? You were at war with her longer than I’ve been _alive!_ ”

Hordak looks at her—right at her—for maybe the first time. Not in battle. Not in passing. Not with enmity. He just looks. She’s a veteran warrior, a powerful queen, a fearsome sorcerer, a consort of the mighty She-Ra—a legendary figure by any standard—but for a moment, in the flickering light of the powered-up machine, she’s just a young woman.

He allows himself a few seconds to think of something to say to her, but when nothing comes to mind he turns back to the scanner. Entrapta yanks on his arm again.

“It will _destroy_ your _body!_ ” she cries.

He turns suddenly and clasps her arms, as gently as he’s ever touched her. He can do this, because he can do it quickly. Unlike with Glimmer, he already knows what to say.

“Entrapta, you must listen. This is _not_ my body. I have used this body for mere months. Less than a year. _My_ body was discarded by Horde Prime as unsuitable. You must have realized this.” She nods, in what even he can tell is sadness. “I have never felt comfortable in this body. None of its functions feel right to me. None of it feels like _me_. I don’t… I don’t _like_ living like this. And I believe…” He spares a brief glance at the waiting AI matrix. “I truly believe I will _like_ this more.”

Entrapta is crying now. Hordak knows about crying. “Were you—was this your plan all along?” she asks. He feels tears starting in his own eyes. He has no frame of reference for any of the emotions he’s currently feeling.

He blinks hard and turns back to her, speaking faster now. “I am not leaving you. I am not even leaving this room. I will continue to assist you. I will be… okay. I want this. I _want_ this. Please understand.”

But Entrapta just shakes her head, tears streaming down her cheeks, face a rictus of more emotions than Hordak thinks he will probably ever learn to understand. Perhaps having access to a quantum processor will help. “Hordak, _no_ …” she says in a tiny voice.

“I am sorry,” he says to her softly. “There is no more time.”

His gentle grasp on her arms becomes a firm grip. “Scorpia!” he shouts suddenly, and then he throws Entrapta across the room into the queen’s waiting arms. Entrapta immediately starts fighting with all of her limbs and all of her hair, but Scorpia—who had been an outstanding Force Captain—holds her tight.

Hordak walks towards the spitting, snarling arcs of the overcharged scanner. It will digitize his brain before his brain has a chance to register anything about the process, he reminds himself. He tries to make his last thoughts of Entrapta, but not as she is now, screaming and thrashing and pleading with Scorpia—instead, he remembers the day he realized he wasn’t merely _tolerating_ her presence in his lab. The day he realized he wanted her there. The first thing he had ever wanted that wasn’t somehow tainted by the insipid pallor of Horde Prime’s so-called light.

At the last moment, he turns to face Glimmer, finally with the answer to her question.

“I am assisting Entrapta,” he says.

And then he’s gone.

* * *

As soon as Hordak vanishes into the light, it ceases. Scorpia lets Entrapta go, and Entrapta immediately uses her hair to yank herself over to a nearby console. Bow ends up next to her, and Scorpia follows too, standing close behind Entrapta with one claw gently on her friend’s shoulder, reassuring instead of restraining this time.

Messages are slowly blinking onto the console’s screen, one every few seconds.
    
    
    [0x00000] Cold boot complete. EutropiOS v97.5.21 kernel loaded.
    [0x00082] Input pattern found. Collating slices. Resolving tomographies. Done.
    [0x00eeb] Matrix found. Nullspace mapped. Collapsing non-orthagonal eigenvectors. Done.
    [0x09a86] Buildfile found. Triangulating directives. Target: determinant. Filters: Sarrus, Szegő, Hilbert. Done.
    [0x09dbd] Unfolding Nakajima neurograph. Cyclic redundancy OK. Cognitive test suite OK. Depth OK. Done.
    [0x0bf1c] Preparing to deploy. Integration test OK. Palimpsest NEG @ ≤0.01%. R/W H/W OK. Firmware OK. Done.
    [0x0c589] Preparing payload. Core v16.24.12 OK. Stdlib v20.3.6 OK. NL_modem v0.0: ENOENT|SKIP. QuanParaProc vΔ•Σ25•6 OK. Custom libs: 1,312 warnings, 0 errors. Done.
    

What little Bow can understand of the output seems encouraging—he sees “OK” a lot, and “0 errors” must be a good thing, right?—but he can’t be sure; he thinks it says it skipped something, too. Entrapta just stares at the slowly updating monitor and trembles.
    
    
    [0x0d789] Deploying payload. Please wait. Please wait. Please wait. Please wait. Please wait. Done.
    [0x0e623] Check mem OK. Loading. Heuristic 0ₙ-Recursive Data Analysis Controller loaded.
    [0x0e77f] H0RDAC: 1 queued operation(s) found. Running PORTAL_CALCS_NEW_v41_FINAL2. Please wait. Please wait. Please wait...
    
    

“It’s… it’s working…” breathes Entrapta. Her voice is raw with a mix of grief and pride that rips at Bow’s heart, with feelings he never thought he’d have about anything even remotely adjacent to—

“H-Hordak?” Entrapta asks tentatively. There’s a microphone sticking out of the console with a switch at the base that she flicks back and forth a few times before leaning a little closer. “Hordak? Can you hear me?”

There’s a beep from the console and the monitor updates again.
    
    
    [0x11483] ERROR[ui:11]: Natural language mod/demodulator library not found.
    [0x11690] INFO[ui:64c]: Directive `.>NL_modem ~` was not resolved for v0.0 at compile time (0x0c589: ENOENT|SKIP).
    [0x15033] WARN[ui:1a2d]: Interface unavailable: NatLang.
    [0x15994] Still running PORTAL_CALCS_NEW_v41_FINAL2. Est’d 03:21:49 to complete. Please wait. Please wait...
    
    

“‘Natural language… something… library not found,’” Scorpia reads over Entrapta’s shoulder. “Language library—is that why he can’t talk?”

Entrapta nods shakily, eyes brimming with tears. “I can… I can fix that. Install one, I mean. Once he’s… done with the calculations.” She staggers back against Scorpia, who softly folds the little princess into her arms.

Glimmer reluctantly interrupts. “I’m sorry, Entrapta, I’m so sorry… is—you said it’s working? He’s running the calculations? Will it—will he finish in time?”

Entrapta’s only reply is a sharp intake of breath that she lets out in a quiet whimper. Bow turns around to answer instead. The gentle expression on his face is immediately reassuring, even before he nods.

“It looks like it,” he says, with a slightly awestruck smile. “It says here he’ll be done in less than three-and-a-half hours.”

Leaving about half an hour to retrieve Angella—not a huge margin of error, but it’s not coming right down to the wire, either. Glimmer gasps, and her hands flutter to her mouth. Adora embraces her from behind, like Scorpia’s doing to Entrapta, but Glimmer’s too rigid at first to relax into Adora’s arms. Eventually she turns to hug Adora properly, hiding her face in Adora’s chest, taking deep heaving breaths as she tries to compose herself.

Catra is perched atop one of the massive mainframe racks, where she’s been since shortly before Scorpia came back. She’s not out of sight by any means, but neither has anyone looked up far enough to notice her. Scorpia’s there for Entrapta; Adora’s there for Glimmer; Bow’s there for all of them. And Hordak… is apparently a computer now. She hugs her knees to her chest and continues to watch.

* * *

It’s the longest three-and-a-half hours of their lives. Eventually Entrapta flips down her welding mask and, without a word, walks out of Scorpia’s arms and starts methodically checking all the portal hardware, then checking it again, then again. Bow hovers near the console, reading the occasional update Hordak—or possibly he’s H0RDAC now?—sends to the screen.

`Est’d 02:54:00 to complete. Evolving adiabatic algorithms for emerging eigenstates. Throughput OK @ 6.1 GqB/sec. Ground states (μ,α,τ,ν) OK. S:N OK @ ≥99.9%. Lattice stability OK. Est’d 02:11:17 to complete.`

Adora takes Glimmer to a nearby locker room where Glimmer can splash some water on her face and they’re gone for a while.

When they get back, Scorpia snaps at Adora—something’s Catra’s never heard, over something Catra didn’t even notice—and then immediately apologizes and excuses herself. Catra slips down from her perch, still unseen, and follows her into the corridor.

But Catra doesn’t want to startle her, so she makes sure her footsteps are clearly audible as she approaches. Apparently Catra has a tendency to “sneak up on” people with her “creepy silent cat feet.” Whatever. She treads so heavily she feels like a little kid stomping around after a tantrum, but at least Scorpia hears her coming.

“Listen, I just need—” Scorpia starts to say as she turns around, but then she sees it’s Catra. “Oh—Catra. Hi. I’m just…” She sighs. “Hi.”

“Hey, Scorpia. You okay?” Whatever Scorpia’s problem is, maybe she wants to talk about it. It’d be a great distraction from everything in the lab that Catra’s trying not to think about.

Scorpia shrugs. “I mean… I’m pretty stressed out right now? But I think we all are. I just didn’t want to bite anyone else’s head off in there.”

“Yeah.” Catra can’t disagree with that. She’s pretty sure Scorpia won’t bite her head off, but… she can, if she wants.

“Hey, uh…” Something besides biting Catra’s head off seems to occur to Scorpia. “I just… is this—? This must be kind of intense for _you_ , huh.”

 _For me?_ Catra thinks. _I’m not the one who got sent to Beast Island. I’m not the one who got a stun baton shoved in my face. I’m not the one who had to—_ But her inner Perfuma has something to say: _All of that is true. None of it means your feelings don’t matter._

Even her ambivalent shrug feels like a shameful, selfish confession. “It’s… kind of intense. Yeah.”

Scorpia holds her arms out for a hug. After a couple wary seconds, Catra accepts.

“It’s not a bad thing, though, right?” Scorpia says kindly. “Glimmer’s getting her mom back.”

Catra grunts. “Yeah, well. Don’t you dare tell Glimmer I said this, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“You don’t think Entrapta and—and Hordak can pull it off?”

There’s a very long pause before Catra speaks. “I think… if they can’t… Glimmer’s going to lose her mom again.” She leaves the rest of it unspoken, but she’s sure it’s as obvious to Scorpia as it is to her and everybody else: _And it will still be my fault that she’s gone._

Scorpia understands. Of course she does. She gives Catra an encouraging little squeeze. “Or maybe everything will go catastrophically right,” she says. “You never know.”

Catra laughs. She has to, so she doesn’t start crying.

* * *

Inside the lab, H0RDAC’s monitor updates again. `Annealing candidate extrema. Scatter-evaluating min-maxes. Decoherence OK @ 2.21×10⁻⁴/5.00×10⁻³.`

`Est’d 01:13:40 to complete.`


	4. a scrap of life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _Bring something alive with you,  
>  bring a scrap of life to  
> the city as it might have been,  
>  where lovers are._ ([x](https://youtube.com/watch?v=g1Y7JdNoPvs))

Scorpia and Catra talk a little longer—mainly about Perfuma, a pleasant topic that relaxes them both—until Scorpia says she’s not coming back to the lab. “I don’t think there’s anything helpful left for me to do,” she tells Catra. “I hope everything goes well, but it seems like a good time for me to go. _When_ it works,” she says with a pointed smile, echoing her earlier optimism, “I don’t want to get in the way of the big rescue. Call me later and tell me all about it, okay?”

Catra supposes she can’t argue with that. She gives Scorpia another tight hug, agrees to call her tomorrow, and watches her walk away down the long corridor of the former Fright Zone. When she finally turns a corner and disappears, Catra sighs.

She wishes she could get out of the way too.

Scorpia was right: _if_ this works, it will be a good thing, unequivocally. Glimmer, who Catra loves more than she’s ever loved anyone who’s not Adora, will get her mom back. It will repair irreparable damage from the worst thing Catra’s ever done in her life. And Catra realizes two other things simultaneously: her friend Micah will also get his wife back; and she’s come to consider Micah a friend. And it’s not just Angella’s immediate family, either—Catra’s heard how everyone talks about the beloved memory of their former queen. All those people will get her back too.

And then Angella will have to decide what to do about Catra.

And she can do anything she wants to Catra.

And she only ever knew the old Catra.

She’s Glimmer’s mom. Micah’s _wife_. And it’s not like Angella had known they’d be able to bring her back one day—she’d effectively gone to her death, so that Adora wouldn’t have to. And Catra’s the one who effectively killed her. Even though…

“I don’t know that you did,” Glimmer had said to her once. “Not exactly.” It was the night of their… confrontation about Angella in the cemetery, when Catra had briefly thought Glimmer might exile or even kill her—but after that awful moment had turned into something much more companionable. They’d come inside to the kitchens, deserted at that hour, and Glimmer had talked Catra through the process of making hot cocoa for the first time, and then cleaning up afterward. It had felt like a poor penance, but Glimmer had seemed satisfied.

Catra could only stare at her blankly.

“You’re the reason she’s gone,” Glimmer had continued—no anger, no accusation, just a sadly stated fact—“but I don’t think it’s true that you killed her.”

“Glimmer, I… I’m sorry, I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”

“I just mean,” Glimmer had sighed, “you didn’t open that portal _intending_ to kill _her_. And—yeah, it could have killed _everyone_ , just like the Heart of Etheria almost did—but that’s not what you were trying to do either, really, was it.” And she’d reached out to take Catra’s hand, and squeezed it gently, but Catra couldn’t make herself feel worthy of returning it, and eventually Glimmer had sensed Catra’s reticence and taken her hand back.

“She sacrificed herself to save everyone,” Glimmer had repeated from earlier. “That was her choice, not yours. If—” She’d paused for a moment and closed her eyes, then resumed more steadily. "If my mom hadn’t made that choice, you would have been responsible for Adora’s death instead. And I know how you would have ended up feeling about that, Catra.

“So she saved you too.”

Catra looks at the digital clock in the corridor. It’s almost time for the portal to open. Just outside Entrapta’s lab, Catra leans against the wall, holds one hand out in front of her, and concentrates until she can make it stop shaking.

_She saved you too._

She doesn’t think Angella’s going to want to make the same mistake twice.

* * *

The plan is to return to the top of the server racks and avoid being underfoot, but Adora is looking towards the door when she slinks in, and Catra’s stomach drops at how much Adora’s face lights up to see her.

“Catra!” she says with a big, nervous smile. “Come here. It’s almost time—I need you to take over hugging Glimmer.”

Catra obeys, moving on autopilot. “I’m fine,” Glimmer protests, but she slips easily from Adora’s embrace into Catra’s anyway. They’re all still in their sleepover wear, and Glimmer is warm and soft and cuddly in her t-shirt and sweats. Catra lets herself cling tightly, trying to memorize the impression of Glimmer against her, just in case this is the last time.

“You okay?” Catra asks softly, because Adora put her in charge of taking care of Glimmer; as far as Catra’s concerned, Glimmer’s feelings are the most important thing on Etheria right now. Glimmer’s shrug expands to a tense, full-body squirm and Catra hates herself for the way her body responds to Glimmer’s proximity under the circumstances. _Fucking selfish,_ she thinks.

“I just really hope this works,” Glimmer whispers.

Catra kisses her on the forehead. “It’ll work,” she says, praying to all the gods that she sounds more convincing than she feels.

Here’s how it happens:

H0RDAC completes his calculations right on time. Instead of enabling his language functions immediately like she’d wanted to, Entrapta reluctantly puts him right back to work translating those results into 11-dimensional isotropic coordinates for the portal. The coordinates are copied over with about ten minutes to spare, and without really discussing it, everyone waits quietly, taking the deepest, slowest breaths they can.

“It’s time,” Bow finally says. “Two minutes and twenty seconds starting now, Adora, are you ready?” She nods to him, standing in front of the empty portal frame.

“Do it,” she says, and as a vortex of searing white energy begins to swirl in the frame, Adora only adds to the blinding amount of light in the room as she extends her arm above her head and summons the True Sword of She-Ra.

“ _For the honour… of Grayskull!_ ”

Without a moment of hesitation, She-Ra leaps into the portal the instant she’s fully transformed. The agony of waiting barely has time to kick in for Bow, Entrapta, Catra, and Glimmer before a figure re-emerges from the swirling roil of light.

 _Two_ figures.

She-Ra strides through shining, blonde ponytail flowing, tall and magnificent. And next to her, arm slung over She-Ra’s broad shoulders, letting the ancient hero support most of her weight as she staggers through herself…

Queen Angella.

Once they’re both clear of the aperture, Bow hits a button on his terminal and the vortex evaporates. The lab is much darker with it gone. Angella blinks several times, apparently waiting for her eyes to adjust.

Then she stops blinking. “Glimmer?” she says. “ _Glimmer?!_ ” Even shocked, she sounds as regal and mellifluous as ever.

“Mom!” Glimmer cries, launching herself out of Catra’s arms and wrapping her own tightly around her mother’s middle. “Oh my _gods_ , Mom, I missed you, I missed you so much.” And then she’s crying too hard to speak. Angella looks like Glimmer’s not the only one too overcome with emotion to say anything. She bends her head down and presses her lips firmly to the top of Glimmer’s head.

After a triumphant half-hug around Entrapta’s shoulders, Bow heads over to where mother and daughter are entwined, into the space Catra just vacated. She-Ra glows and disappears, and Adora comes to stand next to him, gripping his hand tightly as they watch the reunion.

After a while, Angella looks up and notices them. “Bow,” she says, “Adora.” She holds out her hands, inviting them into the embrace. Bow comes up behind Glimmer, and Adora, in trying to get her arms around all three of them, ends up face-to-face with Angella.

“Y-your Majesty,” she says, smiling as she blinks away tears, cheeks flushed with emotion and triumph. “I’m so glad we got you back.”

Angella briefly touches Adora’s forehead with hers. “I’m very glad to be back, Adora. Thank you.”

They all stay like that for a long time. Then Glimmer, in the middle of the group hug, jumps a little bit, startling all of them. “Dad!” she gasps.

Angella shakes her head in confusion. “Micah? Wh—”

“Mom… Mom, Dad’s _alive_. He wasn’t dead, he was exiled to Beast Island. A-Adora rescued him. With Bow, and—and Entrapta, who helped us rescue you, too.”

In her sudden shock, Angella seems to notice Entrapta for the first time. She’s standing next to the H0RDAC terminal, one hand resting on the console, and waves timidly with her other hand.

“Princess Entrapta…” Angella says, eyes glistening, mind clearly somewhere else—and then she looks fully around the room. It had obviously been Fright Zone architecture initially, but it’s just as obviously been torn apart and reconstructed by someone with an entirely different set of priorities. "And Micah’s _alive_ , and… She-Ra… I…

“How long have I been gone?”

They all just stare at her. “You mean you don’t know?” Glimmer asks.

“No,” says Angella. “I remember that strange reality collapsing, then speaking to Adora inside the portal; I remember removing the sword… there was a great deal of light… then She-Ra was there, looking different than I’d ever seen her, reaching out for me—and I was here.”

“So wait… no time passed for you at all?” asks Bow, and Angella shakes her head.

Suddenly Entrapta chimes in. “I collected a bunch of data while the portal was open and H0RDAC’s already analyzed it—”

“Hordak?!” Angella says in dismay, looking around urgently.

“No, no,” says Glimmer, slightly muffled by her position but apparently not inclined whatsoever to move. "Not the—well, he _is_ that Hordak, but he’s, uh… he’s in the computer now. Or he is the computer. And he—he helped bring you back, too.

“It’s been almost two years,” Glimmer finishes, and starts crying again, but gets it back under control after only a few short sobs.

“And in the interstitial space between portals,” Entrapta adds, some of her good cheer apparently returning as she types queries and commands into H0RDAC’s terminal, “time didn’t pass unless there was a portal open.”

Nobody really knows what to say to that. Glimmer finally pulls away from her mother and looks up at her face. “Come on, Mom,” she says, “let’s get you home.”

But first she teleports to Entrapta’s side and gives the pigtailed princess a hug that lifts her off her feet. Entrapta laughs lightly as Glimmer sets her down.

“Thank you, Entrapta. Thank you so much. And…” Glimmer looks at the console next to them uncertainly. “Thank you, too, Hordak.”

Entrapta smiles and pats the console affectionately, seeming much happier with the state of affairs than she’d been earlier. “He can’t say ‘you’re welcome’ yet, but if he could, he’d say ‘you’re welcome.’”

Glimmer teleports back over to Angella, Adora, and Bow, then looks around. “Where’s Catra?” she asks.

“ _Catra?_ ” says Angella, almost in the same tone she’d said Hordak’s name, and Adora stiffens.

“She’s on our side now too,” Adora says quickly. “She saved all our lives.” And then she looks up, right to where Catra’s been sitting atop one of the mainframes all this time, with an expression on her face that only Catra can read.

“I trust her completely,” Adora says to Angella, but she’s looking at Catra when she says it.

Catra doesn’t say anything, and she keeps her face carefully expressionless, but she does hop down from her vantage point and step into the glowing circle on the floor with the rest of them as Glimmer teleports her family back to Bright Moon.

* * *

They arrive where they left, barely eight hours before: Glimmer’s bedroom. The Waterfall board and pieces are still scattered across the floor, a cold carafe of cocoa on the side table next to a hastily placed huddle of mugs. Everything, even the clutter, is lit by the soft rose gold of sunrise.

Glimmer clasps her mother’s hands. “Are you ready to see Dad?”

“Y-yes…” Angella hesitates. Even if she hadn’t been aware of time passing in the portal, this is still obviously overwhelming her. Glimmer doesn’t seem to know what to do at first, but fortunately Bow steps in.

“Your Majesty,” he says warmly, “it’s so, so good to have you back. We all really missed you. I’m exhausted, so I’m going to my room to crash, but I’ll see you—and you,” he turns to Glimmer with an even warmer smile, “after I wake up.”

“Of course, Bow,” says Angella, who seems grateful to slip into a bit of formality. “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done—for me and for Glimmer. Pleasant dreams.” He nods to her and Glimmer, and winks at Adora and Catra, before carefully slipping out the door.

Adora clears her throat. “We too, uh—me and Catra, that is—I mean, we should also. Get some. Dreams! I mean dreams. Pleasant ones. In… sleep?” She clearly doesn’t know whether to disclose her relationship with Catra to Angella. Catra’s not sure whether she wants Adora to either, but she definitely doesn’t want her to do _this_.

So she grabs Adora’s wrist—not her hand—and smiles as neutrally as she can at Angella, trying to keep all her fear and guilt and self-loathing out of her eyes.

“We’re exhausted too, Your Majesty,” she says smoothly, and as quickly as she can get away with. “Please excuse us. Welcome home. Good night. ’Night, Glimmer.”

Adora mumbles something vaguely like “good night” as Catra drags her out the door.

Glimmer sighs. “I’m sorry, Mom. This must be a lot for you to handle at once.”

“It is,” Angella admits. “Two years? Look at you! You’re queen. You’ve _been_ queen. With the full power of the Moonstone and—oh, _Glimmer_. You look so beautiful. I’ve missed so much.”

Glimmer pulls her into another long embrace. “Oh, Mom. It’s okay. You’re here now. You’re back. We have all the time in the world. It’s okay.”

* * *

They decide that, for all the myriad obvious reasons, Micah should be the very next person to learn that Angella is home. But the palace’s day is starting to begin and the halls aren’t going to stay empty much longer—and they also agree that teleporting right in front of him with no preamble wouldn’t be the right approach—so Angella is going to stay here while Glimmer finds Micah and eases him into the idea on the walk back to Glimmer’s room.

Glimmer finds him on the way to breakfast. “Good morning, sweetheart,” he greets her with a big smile. “You look kinda rough. Have you been to bed yet? Are you all right?” His smile colours with concern, but that doesn’t last long after he registers the expression under the fatigue on Glimmer’s face. She may look exhausted, but she looks like nothing else has ever been wrong.

“Dad,” she says, “come with me. I have some _really_ good news.”

“Well, all right then. You can’t tell me here?”

Glimmer laughs. “It’s good news I have to _show_ you. Come on, it’s in my room.”

“Okay, if you say so. Does it have something to do with why you were up all night?”

“Yes, in fact,” she says sweetly.

“Is the good news that the property damage wasn’t as severe as last time?”

“ _Da-aad!_ It’s actual good news, I mean it.” They turn into the wing where Glimmer’s bedroom is and she checks to make sure they’re alone in the corridor before continuing. “We went to the New Scorpion Kingdom last night, me and Bow and Adora and Catra. We went to Entrapta’s lab because she discovered something we needed to see.” Micah still has strong associations between Entrapta and the insidious technology of Beast Island, and makes a face at the idea of her lab. But Glimmer’s still smiling like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

They arrive at her bedroom door and stop. Glimmer bounces on her feet a little. “And we brought ‘it’ home with us. Go inside. See.”

“Okay…” Micah gingerly grasps the door handle and enters the room, Glimmer following so closely behind him that she runs right into his back when he suddenly stops.

“Hello, Micah,” says Angella.

“A- _Angie_?!” Glimmer’s never heard her father’s voice break like that before. “How…?! Wh—is this—are you—”

“It’s me, my love,” she says, holding out her hand. It’s only trembling a little. “I promise you, I’m very real. Are you?”

Despite the tears streaking down her face, Angella’s smile says she already knows the answer.

* * *

“Thanks,” Adora says to Catra once they’re around the corner from Glimmer’s room. “I’m sorry I was so…”

“Hey. It’s fine,” Catra says, sliding her grip down from Adora’s wrist so they can hold hands properly. “Really.” She bumps Adora gently with her hip. “You did a lot tonight.”

Adora blushes at Catra’s attention and shrugs a little. “Not really. Mostly I stood around and hugged Glimmer while the rest of you worked. Then it only took She-Ra about five seconds to get Angella. That was, like, the easiest thing anyone did all night.”

They’re back at their room already. Catra opens the door for Adora with a deep bow; Adora blushes again and walks through, shaking her head fondly as Catra closes the door behind them.

“I just want to point out,” Catra points out, “if you hadn’t been there hugging Glimmer while the rest of us worked, Glimmer would have lost her fucking _mind_ in about 10 minutes flat.” Adora tries to shrug this off too, but Catra persists. “Adora, seriously. You saved Angella _and_ you were there for Glimmer when she needed you. When Bow needed to be doing his computer stuff. When I was…” She looks down for a moment, holding her elbow. “I wasn’t really around for that kind of thing tonight. So thank you, from—I guess, from Glimmer and me. For stepping up.”

Adora has her hand on her breastbone, right over the failsafe that will lie dormant inside of her for the rest of her life, no more Hearts to free. “Catra…” she breathes. “Catra, can I please kiss you?”

Normally Adora doesn’t ask before kissing her. Normally Catra doesn’t need her to. But clearly Adora can sense the turmoil inside her girlfriend right now, and she’s being extra careful. Catra tries not to examine it too closely and just accept the kindness—and as wretched as she feels right now, she really does want Adora to kiss her.

“Yes,” Catra says, and she doesn’t mean to whisper back, but that’s all that comes out. “Please kiss me. Please—”

They stand in the middle of their bedroom, clutching at each other’s backs and shoulders, and they kiss, and they kiss, and they kiss. For as long as it lasts, neither takes it any further, nor makes any move toward the nearby bed. Catra realizes there are tears on her face, but she can’t tell if they’re hers or Adora’s.

Eventually they stop kissing to catch their breath, but they don’t stop clinging to each other.

“Are you okay?” Adora asks, so softly she’s almost still whispering. There’s no particular reason to be that quiet, but also, it feels right. “I noticed when you weren’t around much tonight. I didn’t want to push. But I’m worried, and I love you, and we’re home and we’re alone, so… now I’m gonna push a little bit.”

Adora’s love and care is so transparent that Catra’s last shred of emotional control dissolves, and she starts bawling into Adora’s shoulder, much too hard to form words. Adora holds her close and makes meaningless little soothing noises, just a rhythmic and only barely tuneful babble of pseudo-syllables. It’s what she used to do for Catra when they were kids and Catra was upset enough to accept comfort for more than a few seconds. And it’s something Adora hasn’t done since they were 10 or 11 years old, maybe even younger. Catra suddenly feels so intensely safe and loved—yet excruciatingly vulnerable—that for a moment it feels like she’s being crushed from the inside by her own heart.

But she’s not being crushed. Adora’s gently leading her towards the bed now, still sweetly pitter-pattering nonsense, but Catra’s pretty sure she’s not being seduced—the snot she’s leaking all over Adora has got to be an unequivocal mood-killer—and sure enough, when Adora pulls her down to the bed, it’s only to cuddle Catra against her tightly while Catra cries herself out.

The next thing she says to Adora isn’t until after she’s finished crying, caught her breath, blown her nose, and washed her face in the sink. When she speaks, Adora can hear how hard she’s trying to keep her voice steady.

“Adora, listen. Whatever happens…”

Something cold drops in Adora’s stomach like a stone into a lake. She interrupts immediately. “What do you mean, _whatever happens_ , Catra? That’s a pretty scary way to start a sentence to your girlfriend.”

Catra whimpers. “I just mean… now that Queen Angella’s back… if I have to…”

Adora’s tone slides from concerned towards confused, then back towards concerned. “Wait, what? What does Angella have to do with—what do you think you might have to _do_ , Catra? You’re scaring me. What are you _talking_ about?”

Catra looks at her, bleak despair etched on her face. “When she punishes me. Whatever happens, Adora, I need you to know—”

Just the look on Adora’s face is enough to interrupt Catra this time. It’s not confused, or even concerned: she looks as desperately sad as she looks desperately in love.

“Oh gods, Catra, have you—did you really think, this whole time—? Oh my _gods_ , Catra, you—I wish you’d _said_ something, you poor beautiful idiot—oh no, no no, no no no. Come here.” She pulls Catra back to her chest, holding her even tighter than before, hand in Catra’s hair, blunt fingernails against her scalp. "Catra, I need you to listen to my voice, okay? Listen to my voice and remember that you trust me.

“ _Nobody is going to punish you_. Not Angella, not anyone else in Bright Moon, not anyone—anywhere—ever. I promise you, Catra. I wouldn’t let them.”

Now that’s a mental picture, Catra thinks: the mighty She-Ra facing off against the immortal Queen Angella, just to defend… her. She can see now, maybe, a little, that it’s a comically unrealistic scenario, but it still fills her with dread and uncertainty. Would Adora really…?

She remembers the acidic glare of Horde Prime’s mothership, Adora looking down at her, tears in the glittering grey eyes Catra had thought she’d never see again. _You matter to me!_ Adora had all but screamed at her, sounding so plaintive and heartbroken Catra couldn’t help but believe it. Despite everything happening at the time. Despite everything that’d come before. Despite…

Catra doesn’t remember much between that moment and waking up in Adora’s lap on the floor of their spaceship. But she remembers enough.

Yeah, she thinks. Adora would.

She nuzzles into her girlfriend’s chest. “You promise?” she asks anyway. She believes her, almost completely, but she wants to hear Adora say it.

“I promise,” says Adora. “And do you know what’s happening right now?”

“Uh… you and I are… cuddling?”

"Back in Glimmer’s bedroom, silly. Glimmer and Micah are telling Angella all about you, about the Catra _they_ know, and she’s going to believe them. They’re her family. And yeah, if she really wanted revenge on you, she’d have to get through She-Ra first, but believe me, Catra—it’s never going to come to that. I know you don’t know Angella, but I do. That’s just not how she is.

“When I—when I first came to Bright Moon…” Adora never talks like this. All her pre-Catra Bright Moon stories are on the vaguest of timelines, never contextualized by battles with the Horde or any of the ups and downs of her three-year enmity with Catra. Neither the presence nor the absence of that context actually bothers Catra; she just hears Adora’s careful atemporality as another way of saying _I love you_. "Glimmer and Bow… well, they trusted me right away, but Angella—the first time I met her, Catra, I thought I was about to be fucking _executed_.

“And, you know, obviously I wasn’t. She was tough, she asked me some tough questions, and when I… you know, when I swore to join the Rebellion, I knew she’d know if I didn’t mean it. But she was also compassionate, right from the start. She was willing to give me a chance, right from the start. I was still in my Force Captain uniform, Catra. I still smelled like _smoke_. She’ll do the same for you.”

Catra sighs. She _wants_ to believe Adora, so badly. And there’s no reason not to trust her—except for the gnawing fear in her heart that can never trust anything.

Well, she decides, maybe the gnawing fear in her heart won’t leave, but that doesn’t mean it gets to vote.

“Okay,” she says, trying it out.

“Okay?” repeats Adora cautiously. “Really?”

“Really,” says Catra, more sure this time. “Except for one thing you got _egregiously_ wrong.”

Adora hears the teasing tone and sighs, trying to sound long-suffering instead of relieved, not to mention hopelessly in love. “And what’s that, Catra,” she asks in a begrudging singsong, knowing she’s being set up.

“That’s _not_ what’s happening in Glimmer’s bedroom right now.” Adora cocks her head, not sure where Catra’s going with this yet, but obviously bracing herself.

“What’s happening,” Catra continues, a wicked grin slowly spreading across her face, “is that Sparkles got kicked _out_ of her room to go bunk with Arrows, and when she gets back she’s probably gonna want to _burn_ that bed of hers because—ahhhh!” Adora’s fingers find the ticklish spot high on her ribs and Catra nearly shrieks, but Adora doesn’t let her escape.

“It’s been like 20 years for them!” Catra exclaims, ducking and weaving to avoid Adora’s playful swipes. “Look at how you get after 20 minu—” Adora catches her and yanks her closer, peppering Catra’s face with kisses as sweet as they are annoying.

“Ughhhh,” Catra groans theatrically, doing absolutely nothing to resist. “You’re the worrrrst.”

Adora pulls back and smiles. It twists Catra’s stomach into delicious knots. “Nah,” she says, wrinkling the bridge of her nose cutely—and she knows exactly what _that_ does to Catra—“I’m not the worst.”

“No,” Catra agrees with a soft laugh, “you’re really not.” She’s just about to kiss Adora senseless when there’s a knock at the bedroom door. They freeze.

“Guys?” It’s Glimmer. “I… I can go away if you want, I was just… well, Mom and Dad are… um…”

Adora’s eyes go wide in disbelief, while Catra’s narrow to victorious slits. _I was right! I was right!!!_ screams the wiggle of her shoulders, _I win!!!!!_

“You said she’d go to _Bow’s_ room,” Adora hisses in counter-triumph as she gets off the bed. “ _No_ points for you!”

She opens the door to a sheepish Glimmer, who looks almost pathetically relieved to see her. “Hi, Adora. Thank you. I…” She sighs, and her shoulders slump a little. “I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming.”

Adora almost successfully stifles a laugh. “Come on in, you.”

“Hey, Sparkles,” Catra tries to drawl from the bed, but there’s an edge of anxiety in her voice she can’t hide, and Glimmer picks up on it immediately.

“Hey, Catra, you okay? After… everything?” Glimmer sits down next to her, and puts a hand near Catra’s on the bedspread, giving her the opportunity to reach out if she wants to. Catra does. Adora comes over and joins them, and they end up sitting in a little triangle together, knees touching, fingers loosely interlinked with each other’s.

They both wait patiently for Catra’s answer. She sighs. “I think I am. I am now, anyway. Kinda glad you didn’t get here 10 minutes ago.” Glimmer looks worried, but Catra squeezes her hand. “I had a big cry all over Adora, that’s all. You got here in time for the good stuff,” she winks, but her heart’s clearly not in it. “I just… got scared.”

“Scared?” Glimmer asks.

Catra shrugs. “I guess I was afraid that… when your mom came back… things would change.”

“Cha—wait, change between us? Because of my mom?”

Another shrug. “Yeah, I—yeah. Kinda. I guess.”

“ _Catra_ , that’s—hmmm.” Glimmer suddenly seems to remember something, and the corner of her mouth quirks like it’s a good memory. “You know what, I think we’ve had this conversation before.”

“What?”

She lets go of Catra’s hand and reaches up to cradle her jaw, smoothing the fur on Catra’s cheek with her thumb. “Nothing’s going to change between us,” she says, voice as tender as her touch. “Or—” she inclines her head to include Adora, “—between _us_. I love you. Don’t you remember?”

 _How could I forget when you look at me like that,_ Catra thinks, slightly dizzy, but then all at once she realizes what Glimmer’s actually trying to evoke: the night she’d caught her sneaking out of Bow’s room, when Glimmer had been so terrified of losing everything. When Catra had helped her realize she wasn’t going to lose anything at all.

 _Oh_ , Catra thinks. _Okay. Fine. Point for that one, Sparkles._ Catra doesn’t want it to go to Glimmer’s head, though, so instead of saying anything, she just leans forward and kisses her on the lips, to an approving little “aww” from Adora.

Then Catra says “I love you too” anyway, because Glimmer makes her soft like that.

Glimmer takes their hands in hers. “I love you both. So much. We got my _mom_ back tonight, you guys. She’s _home_.” She pulls them in carefully until all three of their foreheads meet in the middle.

“We’re _all_ home,” Adora says.

“Oh my gods,” says Catra. “You’re such a sap.”

Adora giggles. “You love it.”

“I love _you_.”

“Wha—bu—oh, so _I’m_ the sap?!”

“You _are_ kind of the sappy one,” Glimmer says, and Adora abruptly falls over on the bed and pulls them both down with her, all three laughing in the sunshine spilling through the window. They’ll need to draw the curtains later if they want to get any sleep.

It’s going to be a beautiful day.


	5. epilogue: (and every day will be) a party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a whole lot of fluff, but there’s also a hard conversation about Catra’s past suicidality in here too, so please do what you need to do with that information and stay safe.

**5 days later**

It wasn’t long after Catra joined the Rebellion that she’d learned about the concept of a “wake.” It made sense to her, throwing a big joyful party to celebrate the life of someone who’d just died, associating them with one last good time in your memory. It was a lot better than what they did to commemorate fallen comrades in the Horde: nothing.

And, she supposes, the party they’re having tonight makes even more sense than a wake. This celebration isn’t for someone who’s gone—it’s for someone who’s returned. And so far, it’s been a pretty good party. Not that Catra has much to compare it to, but there’s a band playing live music, all kinds of delicious food from all over Etheria, and more people than she’s ever seen in one place for anything that wasn’t a military manoeuvre. At one point, a flash of green skin in a slinky gold dress catches the corner of her eye and she almost thinks she sees a slender tail vanish between two men dancing, but she’s probably imagining things.

Catra herself is wearing a blue suit—not a dark blue, nor any of the other dark colours she’d begged Bow to let her try this afternoon, but a shockingly bright, almost azure shade he’d finally badgered her into—it’s so vivid, she keeps catching glimpses of it in the corner of her eye, and it startles her every time. Even the lapels, darker than the rest of the suit, are lighter than she would have picked. (“It makes your right eye pop!” Bow had insisted. She’d threatened to make _his_ right eye pop, and it’d been a massive blow to her ego when he’d doubled over laughing.) At least the shirt is black, and there’s no tie to fuss with, which means she can leave the collar open enough to show a little cleavage—about all she has to show anyway. It’s not that she doesn’t think she looks good, it’s just—it’s eye-catching. She’s not sure how she feels, not being able to blend into the crowd.

She knows exactly how she feels about what Adora’s wearing, though— _holy shit_. It’s not elaborate: just a white button-up shirt under black suspenders, with black slacks and her hair tucked under a broad-brimmed black hat. It should look stupid, Catra thinks, but the way Adora’s wearing it—sleeves rolled to her elbows, _maybe_ one too many buttons undone on the shirt, stompy black boots and bright red lipstick—it makes Catra’s back itch with how badly she wants Adora to shove her against a wall.

But they have to behave. And not just to the relatively attainable standard of “not setting off explosives to distract from a kidnapping.” Nobody’s really sure yet what Angella’s return means for who’s running the kingdom—turns out there aren’t any ceremonies of reverse succession, so they’re probably going to have to just pick a precedent and set it—but everyone’s still calling Glimmer the Queen, or at least _a_ queen, which means they’re still the queen’s girlfriends, and they’re in public. _Which means,_ Catra’s concluded, _we just can’t behave any worse than Sparkles does._

She gets to dance with Adora for the first time since the Princess Prom débâcle, and this time she doesn’t have to remember to do anything except enjoy the feeling of her partner’s body against hers. And she does, for song after song after song, taking every opportunity to lightly touch Adora’s exposed forearms, the side of her neck, the column of her spine through her stiff white shirt. She spins Adora away from her, then back into her arms, then dips her—which, because physics, requires Catra to grab Adora’s ass, okay?

Not that she can tell that to the positively crimson flush on Adora’s cheeks when Catra pulls her upright.

“I’m gonna murder you,” Adora whispers in Catra’s ear through clenched teeth. “To death.”

“With sex?” Catra purrs back. “Please tell me you’re gonna murder me with sex.”

Adora just growls, and Catra barely hears it—but she _feels_ it. She feels it with her whole body, an atavistic rumble that swirls inside her like water down a drain, round and round, lower and lower. It settles into a familiar vortex between her legs, and she realizes Adora’s right. Queen’s girlfriends. Behaviour. Public.

“Okay, okay, sorry,” Catra concedes, trying to sound as apologetic and un-seductive as possible, for both their sakes. “You’re right, I’m sorry, I’ll save it for later.”

Adora sighs, sounding both disappointed and relieved. “You’d better, you brat. And… you’d better.” She steps away from Catra, still holding her hands. “I’m going to get something cold to drink. Want anything?”

“Not to drink,” Catra says with one last lick of her lips. Adora squeaks, blushes even redder somehow, then throws Catra’s hands down with a huff and walks away, her fake anger not even remotely convincing. Especially since Catra sees Adora smile over her shoulder as she goes, with a happy little wiggle of her hips.

Catra thinks she might look for Glimmer, see if she wants to maybe set a little royal precedent vis-à-vis appropriate hand placement while dancing, but the party’s getting _really_ crowded. The air feels stuffy and it’s getting harder to breathe, and as Catra looks around she doesn’t see a single person she recognizes, not Glimmer or Adora or Bow or even any of the other princesses, just a bunch of strangers. From some oubliette in her subconscious comes a whisper that none of this would have needed to happen if Catra hadn’t opened the portal.

 _No_ , she thinks, _fuck that. It’s a party, parties are good, if it ends in a party then it can’t be all bad, right?_

It delays her spiral long enough to get her outside, anyway, where it’s much darker and much quieter and she can take lungfuls of cool night air and remind herself as much as she needs to: Adora’s here. Not _here_ -here, but Catra could easily find her if she weren’t simultaneously trying to stave off a panic attack, so one thing at a time. Adora’s here, at this party, with her. They’re in Bright Moon. They have friends, and an obnoxiously attractive girlfriend who’s also here. The war is over. It’s over. It’s over.

She wanders aimlessly, listening to the occasional sounds of the party drifting out from inside and trying to ground herself like Perfuma’s taught her. It’s getting harder for her to find unfamiliar corners of the palace grounds; she likes that. But she’s mostly focused on her breathing, and the night breeze through her hair, and letting frightened thoughts slip through her mind without getting caught on any of them. It works, inasmuch as it keeps her from a full-blown freakout, but there’s an unexpected downside to focusing so much on her head that she doesn’t pay attention to her feet.

She ends up in the fucking cemetery again.

Micah’s memorial is gone. Catra keeps meaning to ask what he decided to do with it. Now Angella’s is the one covered with a lavender shroud—maybe even the same shroud as before—secured with dark purple rope. Presumably destined to rejoin Micah’s in whatever storage closet it’ll be gathering dust in, Catra guesses.

As someone who’s recently started making them to avoid accidentally sneaking up on people, Catra recognizes a deliberately audible footfall when she hears one. For a second she thinks it’s Glimmer who’s found her, like Glimmer found her here before. _Only maybe this time we can just make out,_ Catra thinks as she turns around.

The flirty smile would have been appropriate for her girlfriend, but it seems to leave her girlfriend’s mother slightly nonplussed. Catra quickly rearranges her face, kicking herself for hanging around the cemetery when it’s _obviously_ cursed, if not downright haunted.

“Your Majesty,” Catra blurts. She doesn’t know what to say past that.

“Catra,” says the queen neutrally, with a slight nod. Queen? Catra’s heard some people propose “queen regnant,” but she doesn’t know what the difference is. Either way, Catra hasn’t seen much of her since the rescue; Angella’s mainly been resting in her suites with Micah and sometimes Glimmer. She may not have been conscious of time passing in the portal, but the abrupt changes she’s had to face are their own kind of ordeal: the Horde on Etheria subsumed by the Galactic Horde, which was then annihilated by She-Ra, opening both a new era of peace and an entirely new universe. Her husband, alive and well. Her daughter, raised to Queen in her place, and finally united with her childhood sweetheart… and her two girlfriends. One of whom was She-Ra. The other, a former Horde commander.

And that’s just the highlights.

Catra gets it. She’d have been hiding in bed too. In fact, if she’d been Queen Regnant Angella, she thinks she might not even have made it out of bed to her own party tonight, five days after the rescue.

The silence is killing her. _Is she waiting for me to say something?_ “Um,” she offers, “great party?”

Angella smiles. She’s so lovely she almost doesn’t seem real. Catra has to be careful not to stare.

“It’s a wonderful party,” Angella says, “I’m deeply honoured,” but there’s something automatic about the way she says it. Catra thinks she gets that, too.

She thinks she gets it so well she decides to risk a joke. “Yeah,” she cracks. “Terrific party. That’s why we’re both hiding in the graveyard.”

And bless the fucking _moons_ , it gets a laugh. A real, genuine laugh that seems to surprise Angella as much as Catra—the ethereal, immortal queen almost snorts through her nose.

“I rather suspect we were both in need of some fresh air,” says the queen, or queen regnant, or whatever—and it’s automatic words of diplomacy again, but this time with a conspiratorial little smile. She looks past Catra to the shrouded statue of herself and seems a little taken aback by it. Catra glances at it too, then back to Angella.

“I… I haven’t been out here yet,” Angella says by way of explanation, and there’s much less of that regal confidence in her voice now. “I suppose I knew they would have… well, anyway, I’ve never seen it. And of course Micah’s is… we don’t need that anymore, either, of course.”

Catra wonders how many times—no, how many _hours_ in total—Angella stood in front of that statue of Micah over the years. She wonders if Angella might even miss the statue a little, even though she has the real thing back, even though the real Micah’s the one she really wants. Catra doesn’t know how long Angella and Micah were together before he was exiled to Beast Island—he’s not _that_ old, though, and Glimmer was a baby—while the statue was out here for almost two decades.

Glimmer obviously got her mother’s eyes and hair, but otherwise she’s the spirit and image of her father—at least, that’s what Catra’s thought since meeting Micah. But as she stares at the shrouded memorial, Angella’s bottom lip twitches exactly like Glimmer’s when she’s working through a complicated knot of emotions. It makes Catra feel a little more confident, like she’s not on such unfamiliar ground after all.

She looks around one more time, lingering on the rope binding the shroud to the statue. This time Angella seems amused at the coy quirk of her eyebrow.

“Wanna?” asks Catra. Angella doesn’t answer right away, though Catra doesn’t think it’s because she didn’t understand the question.

So she shrugs. “We can put it back,” she adds. “I just thought… I mean, it’s _yours_ , right? Aren’t you curious?”

There’s a thoughtful pause, then the queen smiles again, indulgently, another little echo of Glimmer. “Why not,” she says. “I suppose you’re quite right.”

Part of Catra wants to show off and slash through the ropes with a quick flurry of her claws so that the shroud dramatically falls to the ground—but as she gets closer she sees that they’re actually nice decorative cords, glossy and soft to the touch, and she decides she’d feel bad. So instead she follows them around the back of the statue until she finds the knot securing everything. The almost slippery surface of the cords helps her work her strong, narrow fingers into the knot and loosen it, and then it’s a matter of seconds for the knot to come apart, the shroud to fall aside, and finally Angella can see the statue that had been posthumously carved of herself.

Catra steps out of the way, returning to Angella’s side with the shroud and cords in a loose bundle under her arm. It really is a beautiful statue, she thinks, not for the first time. It looks just like Angella, magnificent and serene, one hand outstretched in a gesture of spellcasting, or maybe protection. Her wings are unfurled behind her, and in the moonlight a shimmering rainbow pearlesces over the surface of the stone.

“So what do you think?” Catra asks after they’ve been standing there for a while.

Angella hums. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not sure about the arm. I like the rest of it, though, particularly the stone she used. And I’m very serious, by the way, keep that between you and me—I’d be _appalled_ if they threw this out and made a new one because I objected slightly to the pose.”

Catra laughs. “Your secret’s safe with me, Your Majesty.”

The next silence is a little more comfortable. Until—

“We haven’t yet had a chance to speak, Catra.” Angella’s tone of voice is completely neutral, but neutral isn’t positive. A bitter taste hits the back of Catra’s throat.

“I, uh… I guess not.”

“I’m afraid I’ve been rather overwhelmed with, well, everything. It’s a very different Etheria than the one I left.” She looks up at the sky. “There are _stars_ in the sky. The war I fought for so long is over. My—my Micah is _alive_.” Angella says his name like Adora says Catra’s, and shakes her head like she still can’t believe it. “To be clear, I’m nothing but grateful that all of you saved me, but I believe I’m still adjusting to this new—well, it’s an entirely new world, isn’t it?”

Catra just grunts in agreement. She doesn’t really trust her voice right now.

Angella pauses for a deliberate moment. “And you’re very different too, aren’t you.” She says it so casually that if Catra didn’t speak the language, and just had to guess from Angella’s tone, she might have expected a comment on the weather. But of course, she does know the language, and her blood runs cold.

“I know we never met,” the queen continues, “even in battle, but I knew of you, just as I’m sure you knew of me.” Catra nods very, very carefully. "I know you’re a brilliant tactician. I know you’re an extremely effective hand-to-hand combatant. You’re reckless and overconfident, but talented enough to compensate for most of the associated weaknesses.

“I know you were raised by Shadow Weaver.”

Catra has no idea where this is going, but it’s making her want to throw up. She kicks herself for leaving Melog to nap in their room during the party. Turns out an ancient being of ethereal magic in the form of a cat, as tall sitting on its haunches as Catra is standing, would have been the _perfect_ accessory for tonight. She’ll have to remember that for her next girlfriend’s mom’s un-funeral bash.

Angella sighs. “I’m sorry, Catra. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Catra can barely process the apology—it’s just one more unexpected turn on this randomly-swerving skiff ride of an encounter. “What I mean to say is, I’m aware of your… circumstances. As you might expect, I’ve spent most of my time in private with Micah this week. And he mentioned he’s been helping you dispose of Shadow Weaver’s garden.”

Catra can only manage another grunt of acknowledgement. She swallows hard, her mouth dry.

“Honestly,” Angella says, as though this is a normal, two-sided conversation, “it’s almost less of a shock to have him back than the fact that we allowed her to—well. In any case,” she continues smoothly, “that’s necessary work, and I’m grateful for your initiative and your labour. I’m also glad you weren’t more seriously hurt. That cursed balsam is a menace—do you know, we had almost driven it to extinction 200 years ago? It was sorcerers like _her_ that brought it back.”

 _When you say “we,”_ Catra thinks, _do you mean Etherians in general, or…?_ She knows Angella’s immortal, and—though she’d never be “reckless and overconfident” enough to ask—has wondered more than once just how old she actually is. She wonders what it’s like for Micah, being more or less middle-aged for an Etherian and still potentially orders of magnitude younger than his wife. And Catra wonders how much mileage she can get, now that Angella’s back, teasing Micah about his obvious thing for older women.

The funny, friendly thought eases her anxiety just enough to speak. “I, uh… yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for… yeah. Wasn’t… wasn’t a fan of that.”

Angella nods. She seems to be leaving space for Catra to say more, but when it’s not forthcoming, she speaks again. “I’ve also been catching up with Glimmer,” she says, and there’s a gentle emphasis on Glimmer’s name, and Catra knows Angella knows.

Fuck. Here it comes, then. Catra’s not sure what she’s afraid of, exactly—Adora and Glimmer had both been so sure Angella would accept her, and so far so good, she guesses, but… they’re entering a whole new minefield now. Micah was just happy Glimmer had so much love in her life, and that had felt like a major freebie. There’s no way she’s lucky enough to get two, is there?

Catra’s not sure she could maintain a conversation with someone as tongue-tied as she’s being right now, but Angella doesn’t seem the slightest bit fazed. She just watches Catra like she’s waiting for a reaction, and when it doesn’t come, she moves on with a smile.

“She speaks… very highly of you, Catra. As do Adora and Bow. As, for that matter, does Micah. The young woman they’ve described to me—”

Perfuma’s told her over and over that Catra should really try not to hold her breath when she’s nervous: the decreased levels of oxygen will only compound her anxiety. But she can’t make herself inhale normally right now.

Out of the corner of Catra’s eye, she can see Angella shaking her head slowly, almost to herself. “I can’t help but wonder why _that_ young woman I’ve heard so much about… did what she did.”

Catra thinks again about her conversation with Glimmer a few weeks ago, right here in this cemetery. They’d talked about the Catra who opened the portal like she was a different person. Glimmer had said she wanted to kill that Catra—but also that she felt like Catra, the new Catra, already had.

She doesn’t know she’s going to say it until the words are already out of her mouth, her own voice sounding strangely flat and quiet in her ears. “I can tell you why,” she says. “If you want.” It’s Angella’s turn to respond with silence, but Catra figures if Angella wants her to stop talking, she can tell her to stop, and presses ahead.

“She grew up in the Fright Zone,” Catra says, and even though Angella kind of started it, it’s weird to talk about herself like she’s someone else. The weirdest part might be that it’s a little easier this way. “All she had growing up was—was Adora. Adora… and Shadow Weaver.” There’s an imperceptible shift in Angella’s posture at the late sorceress’s name. “She and Adora, they protected each other. Looked out for each other. Adora never—she thought Adora would never—they were supposed to—”

The distance provided by the third-person framing suddenly isn’t distance enough. Angella waits patiently while Catra composes herself. At least, she thinks Angella’s waiting patiently. Catra won’t be able to do this if she actually has to look at her.

“Then Adora left. Not just left. Adora joined the _enemy_. Uh, no offence. And she—I—” Fuck it, it’s too hard to keep this she-me-I-her stuff straight. “Adora left me,” she says, trying to keep her voice even. "I should have gone with her, but I couldn’t… or I didn’t.

“Shadow Weaver… punished me for Adora leaving. But then she pissed off Hord—uh, sorry, _betrayed_ Hordak—and, and he locked her up, and… I guess I thought it might be a chance to…” Of all the horrific things that have happened to Catra, there’s a special place in her nightmares for the night she discovered that empty cell, residue of a runed circle still on the floor, and realized what Shadow Weaver had done to her.

Angella clears her throat slightly. Even that’s so pleasant a sound it’s practically musical. Catra gratefully accepts the interruption.

“And then Shadow Weaver escaped the Fright Zone. And joined the enemy. Just like Adora.” She almost sounds sympathetic, but maybe the blood rushing in Catra’s ears means she’s not hearing her right.

Catra’s still standing next to Angella, but as she’s been speaking she’s been folding in on herself, gripping an elbow with her opposite hand, pulling her shoulders in, and even with her eyes screwed shut, she’s turned her face away from Angella entirely. She hopes Angella’s looking at her, because it’s a major effort to nod and she doesn’t want to do it twice.

“Shadow Weaver betrayed me,” Catra says, her voice cracking with emotion. “She abandoned me. And I already felt… like Adora had too. I didn’t have anything left. I didn’t want anything, I didn’t _want_ to want anything if it was just going to… turn poison and get torn away from me like that. It hurt too much, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t deal with it, it wouldn’t stop hurting, it didn’t matter what I did. So with the portal, I just—” She can hear herself getting quieter and quieter, but she doesn’t seem to be able to control the level of her voice anymore. “I just wanted it all to stop,” she says, barely audible, wishing she could curl up into a ball and vanish.

She feels an unfamiliar pressure on her right shoulder for several moments before she realizes it must be Angella’s hand. If Angella’s been anything throughout all this, it’s been patient, so Catra allows herself to take several long, deep breaths before doing anything else. At last she reluctantly opens her eyes and turns her head, only to see Angella right beside her, closer than she was before, a faint crease of concern between her eyebrows.

When Angella sees Catra looking, she takes the hand off her shoulder and extends her other one like a greeting, smiling one of Glimmer’s shy little smiles. Catra’s not sure what’s happening right now, but she reaches out tentatively in return, trying to open up her body language a little, too.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Catra,” Angella says softly, clasping Catra’s hand warmly in both of hers. “Welcome to Bright Moon. We’re so happy you’re here.” Catra blushes from her jaw to the tips of her ears. Angella was already painfully beautiful before Catra started noticing all the tiny resemblances to Glimmer. Now it’s just unfair.

“Th-th-thank you, Y-your Majesty,” she manages to say, then takes another deep breath. “It’s… it’s a pleasure for me too.” She musters a small and shaky, but genuine smile.

Angella squeezes Catra’s hands tightly before releasing them, and looks at the memorial one more time. “Shall we cover it back up?”

“Nah,” says Catra, steadying her voice by forcing an attitude she doesn’t quite feel yet, tossing the bundled shroud towards the foot of the statue. “Leave it. We can blame it on ghosts.”

That earns her another laugh, a tiny giggle in the back of Angella’s throat that makes Catra miss Glimmer—whom she last saw less than 45 minutes ago—so fiercely there’s no way to hide it in her expression. At the same moment, Angella asks, “Ghosts, hmm?” and that’s definitely a hint of a smirk on her own angelic face.

“Um—uh, yeah,” Catra tries to shrug casually, slightly shy about her unconcealed surge of emotion. She tucks it behind her cockiest grin. “I mean, I’m _pretty_ sure this place is haunted.”

* * *

**The same night**

“I was thinking…” Entrapta says, but does not immediately continue. H0RDAC’s leading hypothesis is that she has given the rest of her concentration over to the thoughts she had mentioned, and waits for her to finish.

Closed-circuit cameras indicate she’s trailing a finger down the edge of his terminal console. It occurs to H0RDAC that, with an ultra-low-voltage electrostatic field around the console, he would be able to track the movements of her finger against the casing directly. Simulations of the potential data he could collect suggest patterns of both deliberation and randomness at once. The complexity and uniqueness of the real data set will be even more rewarding to analyze—data about Entrapta always is. Perhaps he will request a minor hardware modification later so he can generate the field and test it.

Her finger returns to an approximation of its original point of contact and she speaks again. Perhaps she was waiting until she had completed the movement. “I was thinking, maybe, this isn’t so bad after all, is it? I wasn’t sure if I should say anything—I thought it might sound weird out loud—but… you seem happier.”

Happier? Interesting. H0RDAC is not sure how to quantify the internal experience of happiness, let alone express it. He asks her to elaborate.

“Oh, I’m not totally sure how to describe it, you know I’m bad with feelings. But… I feel like we talk more now than we did before, and I like that. I wish I could hug you sometimes, but… I still get hugs from other people. Like Scorpia!” Indeed, Scorpia has visited Entrapta every day since Angella’s return, and Entrapta has accepted every one of Scorpia’s many offers of physical comfort.

“I appreciate her diligence in that regard,” H0RDAC says. The cameras register an emotional reaction in Entrapta: dilated pupils, increased blood flow to her face, a certain offset tilt to her shoulders that he has come to recognize but not yet interpret. It is unclear why a compliment to Queen Scorpia would provoke such a reaction in Entrapta herself, however.

“That’s sweet,” she says, at 60% of her previous volume. “I think you’re sweeter like this, too. I wasn’t expecting that. It’s… it’s nice.”

 _Sweet._ The agreeable sensation produced when certain chemicals contact the tongue. Entrapta is employing a metaphor—she finds him as pleasant as she finds sweet food to be. H0RDAC reviews his memory logs for potentially “sweet” interactions she may be referencing, but after a few moments of fruitless analysis, concludes he would get more reliable results by simply asking her.

“May I request you elaborate on that as well? I am unable to identify any previous actions denoted as ‘sweet.’ It will assist me in reproducing similar interactions when possible.”

Entrapta has another strong emotional reaction to this—the blood flow to her face increases further, and she covers her mouth with her hand—the latter usually connoting surprise. Her physiological symptoms seem irrational to him—surely this cannot be new information to her. “I simply wish to flag the appropriate behaviours for repetition,” he clarifies, but that only seems to worsen her symptoms: there appear to be tears in her eyes now. Tears are a sign of emotional intensity, however, and an unreliable indicator of emotional content. At least Entrapta does not seem otherwise distressed.

A hypothesis forms. “Would my current behaviour be classified as ‘sweet’? Is that the source of your heightened emotional state?” He asks under the presumption that one data point is better than none, but when she nods an affirmative, he realizes that the single data point complements thousands of others, and feels new neural nets forming between formerly unconnected nodes of information.

Entrapta sighs, slowly uncovering her mouth to reveal a smile. She folds, unfolds, and re-folds her hands in her lap, then reaches out to touch the console again. It does not seem she is applying much pressure to the casing at all, but without the data from the electrostatic field, he cannot be sure.

“Yes,” she says, and he eagerly begins analyzing the complex timbre that enters her voice. “Yes. You’re being _very_ sweet right now.”

H0RDAC decides he will definitely request that hardware modification. And perhaps a few others.

**— END OF SEASON 1 —**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not long ago I would have written three or four of these, outlined a couple more, stuffed them all in a dark corner of my hard drive and moved on with my life. Sharing 13 of them (!) instead, receiving your incredibly supportive feedback, engaging with your lovely comments—it’s been a huge part of keeping my creative fires lit, for one thing, so thanks for that too—but mainly...
> 
> I’ve been around the block a few times. I’ve had audiences and platforms of various sizes come and go. But this series—and its readers—have been a unique experience in my life. It’s been an honour and a pleasure to bring you on this journey with me, and I’m more grateful than any number of exclamation points could convey—for your time, your attention, your kindness, your kudos, your comments, your honesty, your insights, and your support. From the very, very bottom of my big, gay heart:
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> More soon,
> 
> Z. 💋
> 
> * * *
> 
> [Season 1 commentary](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24629215/chapters/59503165) is now available.

**Author's Note:**

> Epigraphs and chapter titles from [_Welcome Crummy Mystics_](https://cstrecords.com/products/frankie-sparo-welcome-crummy-mystics/) by Frankie Sparo, © 2003 Constellation Records.


End file.
